poetry
A handwritten manuscript by Scottish poet Robert Burns entitled "The Death and Dying Words of Poor Maillie" is displayed at the Dick Institute in Kilmarnock, Scotland, March 25, 2014. Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett

World Poetry Day is celebrated every year on March 21 to honor people's love for literature around the globe. According to its website, this United Nations-approved observance honors "the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind."

So to mark this day, below are some inspirational words from famous poets about art and literature.

1. "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." — William Wordsworth

2. "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." — Albert Einstein

3. "Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don’t use such an expression as 'dim land of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstractions." — Ezra Pound

4. "What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you’re a poet. But there isn’t one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn’t any formula for it." — Erica Jong

5. "The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs." — Charles Baudelaire

6. "Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes." — Henry David Thoreau

7. "The poetry of the earth is never dead." — John Keats

8. "All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry." — Edgar Allan Poe

9. "A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end." — Robert Graves

10. "A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true." — W.H. Auden

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