For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, ‘Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’ Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.

Thou art a dreaming thing, A fever of thyself.

I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing, the top thing in the world.

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

A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.

The genius of Shakespeare was an innate university.

As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden,- "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;" or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.