Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.

Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.

If I could dwell where Israfel hath dwelt and he where I he might not sing so wildly well a mortal melody while a bolder note then this might swell from my lyre in the sky.

I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager.

Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream.

As a viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass..., I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance ... that I was seized with a violent tremour.