I should write for the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every morning and no eye shine upon them.

You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you: how I would die for one hour.

It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores

Literary men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.

My passions are all asleep from my having slumbered till nearly eleven and weakened the animal fiber all over me to a delightful sensation about three degrees on this sight of faintness - if I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor - but as I am I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibers of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable frown. Neither poetry, nor ambition, nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me.

We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

Already with thee! tender is the night. . . But here there is no light. . .