The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within...could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the result; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline; and the most glorious poetry that has been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

If all the thought which had been expended on the construction of engines of agony and death - the modes of aggression and defence, the raising of armies, and the acquirement of those arts of tyranny and falsehood without which mixed multitudes could neither be led nor governed - had been employed to promote the true welfare and extend the real empire of man, how different would have been the present situation of human society!

There is a harmony In autumn, and a luster in its sky...

Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.