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.

Insolent youth rides, now, in the whirlwind. For those modern iconoclasts who are without culture possess, apparently, all the courage.

... the life of the mind is reality, and love without romantic illumination is a spiritless matter.

Pessimism is the affectation of youth, the reality of age.

And where was happiness if it sprung not from the soil? Where contentment if it dwelt not near to Nature?

A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.

Mediocrity would always win by force of numbers, but it would win only more mediocrity.