A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet . . . yet the fool has never read Shakespeare.

The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us (for a brief period, at least) are, 99 times out of a hundred, persons of mere effrontery-in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.