I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.

But if you ever come to a road where danger; Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share. Be good to the lad who loves you true, And the soul that was born to die for you; And whistle and I'll be there.

Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.

Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.

The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.