“At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God’s own heart?”

“At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God’s own heart?”

“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

“Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”

“A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”

“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”

“Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.”

“The soul's joy lies in doing.”

“Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.”

“We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”