What occasions the greater part of the world’s quarrels? Simply this: Two minds meet and do not understand each other in time enough to prevent any shock of surprise at the conduct of either party

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

Bright StarBright star, would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike...

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...

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.

You are always new, The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.

Let us not go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there for a knowledge of what is not to be arrived at, but let us open our leaves like a flower, and...

Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

It is true that in the height of enthusiasm I have been cheated into some fine passages; but that is not the thing.

Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey,...

Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the...

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific and all his men Look’d...

Once upon a time, the American met the Automobile and fell in love. Unfortunately, this led him into matrimony, and so he did not live happily ever after.

She looked at me as she did love, / And made sweet moan.

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter

Nothing ever becomes real ’til it is experienced.

Where’s the cheek that doth not fade, / Too much gazed at?

But were there ever any / Writhed not at passed joy?

Pass into nothingness.

A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no identity – he is continually informing and filling some other body.

Stop and consider! life is but a day; A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way From a tree’s summit; a poor Indian’s sleep While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep Of Montmorenci

To SolitudeO Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,— Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal...

I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after...

The latest dream I ever dreamed / On the cold hill side.

The automobile changed our dress, manners, social customs, vacation habits, the shape of our cities, consumer purchasing patterns, common tastes and positions in intercourse

Mortality / Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,

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.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a...

Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,What can I do to kill it and be free?

We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

I am fit for nothing but literature.

There is a budding morrow in midnight, / There is a triple sight in blindness keen.

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.

Nothing ever becomes real till experienced – even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced; even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, / Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too?

O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts!

Away with old Romance! Away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts; Away with love-verses, sugar’d in rhyme, the intrigues, amours of idlers; Fitted for only banquets of the night where dancers to late...

Ever let thy Fancy roam, Pleasure never is at home

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter.

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

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.

Fame like a wayward girl, will still be coy – To those who woo her with too slavish knees