To country people Cows are mild, And flee from any stick they throw; But I’m a timid town bred child, And all the cattle seem to know.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, there never was a cat of such deceitfulness and sauvity.

Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin.

What is true, is true only for one time and only for one place.

I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.

What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning.

Sensibility alters from generation to generation in everybody, whether we will or no; but expression is only altered by a man of genius.