Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?

No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes

To make ideas effective, we must be able to fire them off. We must put them into action.

In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows.

Criticism? An artist wants praise. Praise.

I will dream today; for I must unscrew my head somehow.

For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? --some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning--indeed they did.