The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.

Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.

Animals are born and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed and peaceful only in old age.