There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

It is the custom when praising a Russian writer to do so at the expense of all other Russian writers.

Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.

This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.

With Wordsworth, indeed, the light of revelation did not fall upon human beings so unbrokenly as upon the face of the earth. He knew the birds of the countryside better than the old men, and the flowers far better than the children.

A boy in love is not mainly a calf but a poet.

Keats, it must be remembered, was a sensualist. His poems ... reveal him as a man not altogether free from the vulgarities of sensualism, as well as one who was able to transmute it into perfect literature.