Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of all parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.

His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world.

The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.

A fool and his words are soon parted.

There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.

Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

What leads to unhappiness, is making pleasure the chief aim.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

A man has generally the good or ill qualities, which he attributes to mankind.

Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.

The lines of poetry, the period of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.

Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.

Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.

The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.

Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.

Taste is pursued at a less expense than fashion.

Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

Art: If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.

Because people are very interested in my poetry, in what I say.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic.

For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not.

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.

Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.

To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.

Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words.

I don't know a better preparation for life than a love of poetry and a good digestion.

On the other hand, if there's an underlying core of poetry that I go to, I go to the sea. I've lived on the sea all my life. I live on the sea in Cape Breton.

There is one type of ideal woman very seldom described in poetry - the old maid, the woman whom sorrow or misfortune prevents from fulfilling her natural destiny.