“The fountains mingle with the river,And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever,With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single;All things by a law divine In one another's being mingle:— Why not I with thine? See! the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea:— What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?”

“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.”