Better than fame is still the wish for fame, the constant training for a glorious strife.

Patience is a good palfrey, and will carry us a long day.

Sharp is the kiss of the falcon's beak.

The more the merely human part of the poet remains a mystery, the more willing is the reverence given to his divine mission.

A man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him.

Ah, what without a heaven would be even love!--a perpetual terror of the separation that must one day come.

The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes, and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina.