Poetry expresses wisdom…

• A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. Robert Frost
• Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand. Plato
• There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth. Aberjhani
• There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary. Walter Scott
• For Poetry is the wisdom of the blood, That scarlet tree within, which has the power To make dull words bud forth and burst in flower. Osbert Sitwell
• Poetry is the special medium of spiritual crazy wisdom, the form of expression that comes closest to creating a bridge between words and what is wordless. Wes Nisker
• Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. Percy Bysshe Shelley
• No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. Henry David Thoreau
• Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they epitomize the wisdom and experience of the race. Stanley Kunitz

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…and truth…

• Poetry’s object is truth. Christine de Pizan
• Poetry lies its way to the truth. John Ciardi
• Poetry is a presentiment of the truth. Anna Kamienska
• Truth shines the brighter, clad in verse. Alexander Pope
• Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes. Philibert Joseph Roux
• The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. Jean Cocteau
• Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. Samuel Johnson
• In poetry you can leave out everything but the truth. Deborah Keenan
• Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences. Octavio Paz
• Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling. Muriel Rukeyser
• Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth. June Jordan
• Poetry is only secondarily about words. Primarily, it is about truth. Dan Simmons
• In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth. Edward Abbey
• Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism, I think. Grant Morrison
• Words are the only bullets in truth’s bandolier. And poets are the snipers. Dan Simmons
• Poetry implies the whole truth. Philosophy expresses a particle of it. Henry David Thoreau
• I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact. Edward Abbey
• Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us. S. Eliot
• Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma. Jean Cocteau
• There is neither painting, nor sculpture, nor music, nor poetry. The only truth is creation. Umberto Boccioni
• In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself. Seamus Heaney
• There is nothing more poetic than the truth. He who does not see poetry in it will always be a poor versifier outside of it. Multatuli
• The white light of truth, in traversing the many sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted into iris-hued poetry. Herbert Spencer
• The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think. June Jordan
• Poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts. Aristotle
• That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth. Ivan Turgenev
• All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand; they are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. John Kenneth Galbraith
• Prose pretends to be straightforward in its application to the truth, but truth itself is a dissembler. Poetry, much more honest, knows the deception can’t be overcome. Laurence Overmire
• We need a safe place, a reserve of truth, a place where words kindle ideas and set ideas sparking off in others, a word sanctuary. Poetry is this gathering place of words. Allison Mackie
• What’s the function of poetry? It’s to express general truths, to connect with the reader and make him think: ‘Wow, I’ve experienced that, but you’ve expressed it so much better.’ Giles Andreae
• A poet’s soul must contain the perfect shape of all things good, wise and just. His body must be spotless and without blemish, his life pure, his thoughts high, his studies intense. Augustine Birrell
• Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet. Huston Smith
• The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle. Adrienne Rich
• I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one else dares to. I think the poet is the first person to begin the shaping and visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else has begun to sense it; I think these are two of the most essential human functions. Diane di Prima

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…an expression of truth dwelling in beauty…

• Poetry is truth dwelling in beauty. Robert Gillian
• Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth. Aberjhani
• The true philosopher and the true poet are one, and a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely. Henry David Thoreau

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…an expression of emotional truth…

• The universe of poetry is the universe of emotional truth. Our material is in the way we feel and the way we remember. Muriel Rukeyser
• Poetry examines an emotional truth. It’s an experience filtered through the personality of the poet. We look to poetry for visions, not scientific truths. The poet’s job is to combine new elements. Explore their melting, seeping into one another. Diane Glancy
• Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling. A fine poem will seize your imagination intellectually – that is, when you reach it, you will reach it intellectually too – but the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling. Muriel Rukeyser
• Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character; it tends to beget a love of beauty and of truth in alliance together, it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in making principles operative. Matthew Arnold

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…an expression of the truth of the heart

• When a man talks from his heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry. Ray Bradbury
• Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth – the true poet is very near the oracle. Edwin Hubbel Chapin
• When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry. Muhammad Iqbal
• Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. It holds the cadence of common life. It has a passion for truth and justice and liberty. Garrison Keillor

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