"Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does."

Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.

Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are.

While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool. But you yourself may prove to show it, Every fool is not a poet.

Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day, Charm'd the small-pox, or chased old age away; Who would not scorn what housewife's cares produce, Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

I find I cannot exist without Poetry

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance".

“Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.”

“I read poetry to save time.”

"The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality."

"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."

“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” 

“Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.” 

“Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge - it is as immortal as the heart of man.” 

“to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature” 

“Poetry is the image of man and nature” 

“For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...” 

“Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all science.” 

“Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all science.” 

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”