The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human passions.

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

I can understand your wanting to write poems, but I don't quite know what you mean by "being a poet."

All cases are unique, and very similar to others.

What is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place.

The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.

You must not on any account give me credit for being penetrating. I have impressed people that way before, and the result is always disaster.

It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.

It's harder to confess the sin that no one believes in Than the crime that everyone can appreciate. For the crime is in relation to the law And the sin is in relation to the sinner.

No scheme for a change of society can be made to appear immediately palatable, except by falsehood, until society has become so desperate that it will accept any change.