A quote is a line that creates a unique experience for everyone who reads it. For some, it brings motivation; for others, it's a source of inspiration. For some people, writing quotes is a way to earn money, while for others, it's a way to impress their girlfriend.
And if these quotes are written in the form of poems or about poetry itself—then nothing can be more beautiful. Quotes have the power to make someone's evening lovely, and sometimes even unforgettable.
Some quotes heal a broken heart, some awaken buried dreams.
Some make you smile in silence, while others make you reflect deeply.
They may be just words—but for the right person, at the right time—they can be everything.
That's the magic of words about words — when poets reflect on their own craft, they reveal the deepest truths about human expression, emotion, and art. Here are 40+ magical quotes from famous poets that will make you fall in love with poetry all over again.
1. "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."
— Robert Frost
2. "A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."
— Robert Frost
3. "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."
— William Wordsworth
4. "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
5. "Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air."
— Carl Sandburg
6. "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."
— T.S. Eliot
7. "Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful."
— Rita Dove
8. "Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness."
— Alice Walker
9. "Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth."
— Samuel Johnson
10. "Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment."
— Carl Sandburg
11. "A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language."
— W.H. Auden
12. "Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own."
— Salvatore Quasimodo
13. "Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words."
— Edgar Allan Poe
14. "Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations."
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti
15. "Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance."
— Carl Sandburg
16. "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."
— Carl Sandburg
17. "Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows."
— Edmund Burke
18. "Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge."
— William Wordsworth
19. "Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement."
— Christopher Fry
20. "Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought."
— Audre Lorde
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Simply choose a contemplative or inspired mood, share what poetry means to you — whether it's healing, self-discovery, connection, or pure beauty — and let the AI help you craft meaningful poems that capture your own poetic philosophy. Poetry is not just about reading the great masters — it's about finding your own voice and adding to the eternal conversation about what it means to be human!
21. "Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads."
— Marianne Moore
22. "Poetry is the deification of reality."
— Edith Sitwell
23. "Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls."
— Voltaire
24. "Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature."
— Augustus William Hare
25. "Poetry is the art of uniting the conscious and the unconscious."
— Dylan Thomas
26. "Poetry is the human soul entire, squeezed like a lemon or a lime, drop by drop, into atomic words."
— Langston Hughes
27. "Poetry is the voice of the unheard."
— Mahmoud Darwish
28. "Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone."
— Adrienne Rich
29. "Poetry is the language of the heart, the whisper of the soul."
— John Keats
30. "Poetry is the art of painting with words."
— Horace
31. "Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air."
— Carl Sandburg
32. "Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower."
— Carl Sandburg
33. "Poetry is the language of the soul's secrets."
— Rainer Maria Rilke
34. "Poetry is the mother tongue of mankind."
— Johann Georg Hamann
35. "Poetry is the art of making life matter."
— Mary Oliver
36. "Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it in beauty."
— Plato
37. "Poetry is the shadow of what we feel, cast in words."
— Octavio Paz
38. "Poetry is the language of the gods."
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
39. "Poetry is the art of letting the invisible become visible."
— Paul Celan
40. "Poetry is the echo of the melody of the universe in the heart of man."
— Rabindranath Tagore
🌟 Final Thoughts
These 40+ poetic insights remind us why poetry endures — it distills life's chaos into clarity, its pain into beauty, and its silence into song. Each quote reveals a different facet of poetry's power: to heal, to reveal, to connect, to transform, and to make the ordinary extraordinary.
Whether poetry is your "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth) or your way to "give name to the nameless" (Lorde), these voices from across centuries and cultures remind us that poetry is both deeply personal and universally human.
In a world that often rushes past beauty and meaning, poetry remains our sanctuary — a place where words become music, where feelings find form, and where the human spirit speaks its deepest truths.
Which quote speaks to you most? Share your favorite below and tell us what poetry means to you! ✨📝
Want to explore more poetic inspiration? Check out our AI Poem Generator to create your own verses and join the eternal conversation of poets across time!
