Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by? ---"On death

Nothing ever becomes real till experienced – even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it

Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne, Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers.

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.

Feeling well that breathed words Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps Of grasshoppers against the sun.