Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?

A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.

Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe, and restores to us forgotten paradises.

It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays.

I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.

The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

[History is] that terrible mill in which sawdust rejoins sawdust.