You are always new to me.
To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty.
Some say the world is a vale of tears, I say it is a place of soul-making.
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man; it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself.
There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of immortality.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.
I never can feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of its beauty.
I should write for the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night’s labors should be burnt every morning and no eye shine upon them.
I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave – thank God for the quiet grave.
Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!
If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true.
All clean and comfortable I sit down to write.
Everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear.
In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne’er remember Their green felicity.
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest.
The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.
We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that “ridicule is the test of truth.”
How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they.
What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon poet.