35 quotes
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced — Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it.
Letters (1817)
Call the world if you please "The vale of soul-making."
Letters (1817)
The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.
Letters (1817)
Scenery is fine — but human nature is finer.
Letters (1817)
You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest.
Letters (1817)
You might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.
Letters (1817)
Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers.
Letters (1817)
Every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer.
Letters (1817)
The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream — he awoke and found it truth.
Letters (1817)
There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of immortality.
Letters (1817)
Works of genius are the first things in this world.
Letters (1817)
I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
Letters (1817)
They will explain themselves — as all poems should do without any comment.
Letters (1817)
I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.
Letters (1817)
A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity — he is continually informing — and filling some other body.
Letters (1817)
O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
Letters (1817)
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not.
Letters (1817)
I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you!
Letters (1817)
I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.
Letters (1817)
Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
Letters (1817)