The Thames is a wretched river after the Mersey and the ships are not like Liverpool ships and the docks are barren of beauty ... it is a beastly hole after Liverpool; for Liverpool is the town of my heart and I would rather sail a mudflat there than command a clipper out of London

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, 3 hours in a seasick steamer, & after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak 3 times, & then be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

And may we find when ended is the page, Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage.

Off Cape Horn there are but two kinds of weather, neither one of them a pleasant kind.

In the dark room where I began My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her.

Love is a flame to set the will on fire

Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.