What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon poet.

O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!

X. I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!” XI. I saw their starved lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill’s side. XII. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.

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.

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

I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.

To the very last, he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carrière ouverte aux talents, - the tools to him that can handle them.