Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls

War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

Among true and real friends, all is common; and were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friend.

To be omnipotent but friendless is to reign.

But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.