God is the perfect poet.
Robert Browning

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
George Sand

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
Carl Sandburg

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
Thomas Hardy

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.
Horace

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
Voltaire

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
Plutarch

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
Novalis

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
Kahlil Gibran

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
Robert Frost

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.
William Hazlitt

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
Carl Sandburg

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.
Charles Simic

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
Leonard Cohen

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
Rita Dove

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
Plato

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
T. S. Eliot

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
Paul Engle