--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it.... I never felt my mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment- upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses

There is an old saying "well begun is half done"-'tis a bad one. I would use instead-Not begun at all 'til half done.

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not – for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty . . .

If I should die, I have left no immortal work behind me — nothing to make my friends proud of my memory — but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.

Some say the world is a vale of tears, I say it is a place of soul-making.