Prose Quotes

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain [and] the noise of battle. [It] has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty. (John Cheever)
Always be a poet, even in prose. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
A poet or prose narrator usually looks back on what he has achieved against a backdrop of the years that have passed, generally finding that some of these achievements are acceptable, while others are less so. View quote
Eyvind Johnson
The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. View quote
Ernest Hemingway
All which is not prose is verse; and all which is not verse is prose. View quote
Molière
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order. View quote
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Many of today's verses are prose and bad prose. View quote
Eugenio Montale
A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered. View quote
Lee Strasberg
Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,imported by Madame de Stal, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics,'Providence has given to the French the empire of the land to the English that of the sea to the Germans that ofthe air' Richter German humorist prose writer. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Poetry must be as well written as prose. (Ezra Pound)
Good authors, too, who once knew better words Now only use four-letter words Writing prose - Anything goes. View quote
Cole Porter
I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink. View quote
Ernest Hemingway
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired. View quote
Edward Young
You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. View quote
Mario Cuomo
The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy. View quote
Louis Kronenberger
From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose. View quote
Mark Strand
A probing analysis of the problems of evolution forms the basis of my prose. View quote
Johannes V. Jensen
A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose. (Samuel McChord Crothers)
When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut! View quote
Kenneth Koch
Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process. View quote
Franz Grillparzer
Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions. View quote
William Ewart Gladstone
The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. View quote
Edgar Allan Poe