A red, red rose, all wet with dew, With leaves of green by red shot through.

I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.

It is curious that nearly all the great fortunes are made by turning beautiful things into ugly ones. Making beauty out of ugliness is very ill-paid work.

There are brown eyes in the world, after all, as well as blue, and one pair of brown that meant heaven to me as the blue had never done

One of the uses of poetry - one says it to oneself in distressing circumstances, ... or when one has to wait at railway stations, or when one cannot get to sleep at night.

everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep on.

Then suddenly Jack was a changed boy. Something wonderful had happened to him, and it had made him different. It sometimes happened to people that they see or hear something quite wonderful and then they are never altogether the same again.