Thought and theory must precede all action, that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
William WordsworthLet beeves and home-bred kine partake The sweets of Burn-mill meadow; The swan on still St. Mary's Lake Float double, swan and shadow!
William WordsworthPoetry is most just to its divine origin, when it administers the comforts and breathes the thoughts of religion.
William WordsworthI have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.
William Wordsworth