“Familiar acts are beautiful through love.”

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear.

Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.

When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him.

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

This lake exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty.

Are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar?

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.

Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.

I love tranquil solitude.

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

God works in his elect in two ways: inwardly, by his Spirit; outwardly, by his Word.

I take the ball, I go wide, I cross, I shoot, but when the moment beckons, I am ready to make the difference.

If you knew Jesus was coming tomorrow, what would you do today? Then do it!

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.

Theirs is not to make reply: Theirs is not to reason why: Theirs is but to do and die.

I know how bad Albany is. I know it better than most. I understand why people are angry. I’m angry. The question is going to be, how do you change Albany, what is the plan for change, and then how do you actually get it done?

Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.

Time is not measured by the passing of years but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.