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)

A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it.

Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick.

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 Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.

If a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend on it, he is sinking downward to be a devil.

All men, even the most surly are influenced by affection.