A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Conversation is not a search after knowledge, but an endeavor at effect.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget.

Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.

Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel.