“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.”

I want a brighter word than bright.

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

Souls of poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host’s Canary wine?

The air is all softness.

If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true.

I wish to believe in immortality-I wish to live with you forever.

There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music.

Health is the greatest of blessings – with health and hope we should be content to live.

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity.

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance.

Every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer.

A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.

I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing, the top thing in the world.

Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.

Life is but a day; A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way From a tree’s summit.

How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they.

Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.

All our “most sacred affections ” are merely prosaic habit.

Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection, – these are love’s pretty ingredients for a kiss.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.

We need truth to grow in the same way that we need vitamins, affection and love.

A woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.

Look to the cross, think of the cross, meditate on the cross, and then go and set your affections on the world if you can.