Creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and with such co-presence of the whole picture flash'd at once upon the eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. (Describing his poetic ideal, 1817)

The fair breeze blew, The white foam flew, And the forrow followed free. We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.

That saints will aid if men will call; For the blue sky bends over all!

The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. "Thou shalt not" is their characteristic formula.

Contempt is egotism in ill- humor.

The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn whether it furnished him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, armaments, or playwiths but who sought to know it for the gratification of knowing.

A stately pleasure-dome decree.