“This lake exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty.”

If a person’s religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless.

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.

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.

I usually go to sleep with wet hair. When I wake up, it either has a really pretty wave, or I look like a poodle.

We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides.

Let a series of happy thoughts run through your mind. They will show on your face.

What matters is not your outward appearance but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle gracious kind that God delights in.

Now I will show myself to have more of the serpent than the dove; That is–more knave than fool.

The professional will not tolerate disorder… He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.

In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.

One of the effects of fear is to disturb the senses and cause things to appear other than what they are.