How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.

I was myself the compass of that sea: I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw Or heard or felt came not but from myself; And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

It's not always easy to tell the difference between thinking and looking out of the window.

The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The boughs of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.