The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

If time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.

Signs are taken for wonders. / 'We would see a sign!' / The word within a word, unable to speak a word, / Swaddled with darkness.

My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.

To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.

I am no prophet-and here's no great matter.

I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.