Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks.

To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.

And to be wroth with one we love…Doth work like madness in the brain.

A great mind must be androgynous.

Call not that man wretched, who whatever else he suffers as to pain inflicted, or pleasure denied, has a child for whom he hopes and on whom he doats.