Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.
I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen.
Scenery is fine -but human nature is finer.
O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
The air is all softness.
How sad is it when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things which are not.
Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.
I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.
Let me write not for fame and laurel, but from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful even if my night's labors be burnt each morning and no eye ever shine upon them.
We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.
The Public - a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty.
You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you: how I would die for one hour...
I never was in love - yet the voice and the shape of a woman has haunted me these two days.
Yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From out dark spirits.
What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet.
Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel.
Fine writing, next to doing nothing, is the best thing in the world.
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.
I find I cannot exist without Poetry.
This is a mere matter of the moment. I think I shall be among the English poets after my death.
It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores.
For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.
I love you the more that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.
I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become more acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.
I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the thousand and first—‘t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.
I find that I can have no enjoyment in the World but continual drinking of Knowledge - I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world.
Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.
I can feel the daisies growing over me.
There is an old saying "well begun is half done" - 'tis a bad one. I would use instead, "Not begun at all till half done;" so according to that I have not begun my Poem and consequently (a priori) can say nothing about it.
Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.
Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.
Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter.
Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.
Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun/ And she forgot the blue above the trees,/ And she forgot the dells where waters run,/ And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;/ She had no knowledge when the day was done,/ And the new morn she saw not: but in peace/ Hung over her sweet basil evermore,/ And moisten'd it with tears unto the core.
You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving.
The two divinest things the world has got— A lovely woman and a rural spot.
We have woven a web, you and I, attached to this world but a separate world of our own invention.
It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more Beautiful than Beauty's self.
And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes.
If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.
I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource.
I never felt my Mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment - upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses.
I scarcely remember counting upon happiness—I look not for it if it be not in the present hour—nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.
