No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

I had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a lighthouse, which was more light, we think, than the University afforded.

All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.

No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of spring.

The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.