He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the "Faery Queen."

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave.

History is clarified experience.

It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity