I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

It seems to me that this is the true test for poetry: - that it should go beneath experience, as prose can never do, and awaken an apprehension of things we have never, and can never, know in the actuality.

There is in every human being, I think, a native country of the mind, where, protected by inaccessible barriers, the sensitive dream life may exist safely.

The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.

A doctrine of endurance flows easily from our lips when we are enduring jam and our neighbors dry bread, and it is still possible for us to become resigned to the afflictions of our brother.

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.

It is human nature to overestimate the thing you've never had.