Poetry should be vital--either stirring our blood by its divine movements or snatching our breath by its divine perfection. To do both is supreme glory, to do either is enduring fame.

Poetry should be vital--either stirring our blood by its divine movements or snatching our breath by its divine perfection. To do both is supreme glory, to do either is enduring fame.

I am far too much in doubt about the present, far too perturbed .about the future, to be otherwise than profoundly reverential about the past.

Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.

Any ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.

That great dust-heap called 'history'.

Libraries are not made, they grow.