“Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.”

Many a crown shines spotless now that yet was deeply sullied in the winning.

The key to education is the experience of beauty.

In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitudes.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Uncommon men require no common trust; give him but scope and he will set the bounds.

A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.

Joy is the mainspring in the whole Of endless Nature’s calm rotation. Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll In the great Time-piece of Creation.

The world’s history is the world’s judgment.

It is play and only play that makes man complete.

I am better than my reputation.

One can give advice comfortably from a safe port.

Live with your century; but do not be its creature.

A healthy nature needs no God or immortality.

Only through Beauty’s morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge.

Time is a blooming field: nature is ever teeming with life: and all is seed, and all is fruit.

The May of life blooms once and never again.

Beautiful flower, grow untamed.

I think you’re made of flowers, how you bloom when there’s light in your skin.

All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring In goodly colours gloriously arrayed; Go to my love, where she is careless laid.

How many perils doe enfold The righteous man to make him daily fall.

As one sits here in summertime and listens to the cuckoo and all the other bird songs, the crackling and buzzing of insects, as one gazes at the shining colors of flowers, doth one become dumbstruck before the Kingdom of the Creator.

I knew I held strength when in the darkest, coldest corner of my mind I managed to make flowers grow.

No dainty flower or herbs that grows on ground, No arborett with painted blossoms drest And smelling sweet, but there it might be found To bud out fair, and throw her sweet smells all around.

I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life – but there was no one to tell me.