Because I value the gift, solace, and challenge of poetry, I have started collecting quotes that help illumine the process and purpose of poetry. I’ll add to the list as I find good ones, from both historical and contemporary sources. Here is what I have so far:
Poetry is:
“…the music of the soul.” ~Voltaire
“…when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” ~Robert Frost
“…the art of uniting pleasure with truth.” ~Samuel Johnson
“…the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself.” ~William Hazlitt
“…[that which] makes my body so cold no fire can warm me,” [and makes me} “feel as if the top of my head were taken off.” ~Emily Dickinson
“…not the assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us.” ~T.S. Eliot
“…the breath and finer spirit of knowledge.” ~William Wordsworth
…
To read more go to my personal blog where I have revised and re-posted this list:
