Poetry Quote by Robert Penn Warren — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“In the last analysis, be always of whatever truth you would live.”

“For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge into darkness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.”

“Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something”

“He thought of night coming on. He thought of the loneliness of tonight, this first night in the ground. This, he thought, was the moment when the dead must first feel truly alone. This was the moment when the dead, in loneliness, feel the first stirrings of the long penance of decay. This was the moment when the dead realize the truth: This is it, it will never be different.”

“For what blessing may a man hope for but”

“It turns out I was right.”

“Also, it was the morning and it seemed a little odd to be thinking about poetry before luncheon.”

“I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.”

“Fascists always attack minorities,”

“Poetry seems especially like nothing else so much as itself. Poetry is not like, it is the very lining of the inner life.”

“Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity for our existence. It forms the quality of light from which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”