"In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission."

"There is one art, of which every man should be master, the art of . If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all? In like manner, there is one knowledge, which it is in every man's interest and duty to acquire, namely, : or to what end was man alone, of all animals, endowed by the Creator with the faculty of self-consciousness?"

"The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every ... minutest fiber."

"The artist must imitate that which is within the thing, that which is active through form and figure, and discourses to us by symbols."

"Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation."

"The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive."

"The most general definition of beauty ... Multeity in Unity."

"Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former."

"Iago's soliloquy—the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful it is!"

"But alas! the exceptions prove the rule. For who will dare to force his way out of the crowd,—not of the mere vulgar,—but of the vain and banded aristocracy of intellect, and presume to join the almost supernatural beings that stand by themselves aloof?"

"Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure."

"The poet is not only the man made to solve the riddle of the universe, but he is also the man who feels where it is not solved."

"Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, etc., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics."

"How seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits Honour or wealth, with all his worth and pains! It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, If any man obtain that which he merits, Or any merit that which he obtains. &emsp;&emsp;. For shame, dear Friend! renounce this canting strain! … Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures, and , And , regular as infants' breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, , his , and the Angel ."

"The Dwarf sees farther than the Giant, when he has the Giant's shoulders to mount on."

"An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat countries, with spire-steeples, which, as they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and star."

"A mother is a mother still; The holiest thing alive."

"Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud To rise before me — Rise, oh, ever rise; Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth! Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God."

"Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element! Utter forth ' God,' and fill the hills with praise!"

"Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost."

"Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flower Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? 'God!' let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, 'God!' 'God!' sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, 'God!'"

"Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!"

"O struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars."

"Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. Awake, Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn."

"O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer, I worshipped the Invisible alone."

"Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines."

"Around thee and above, Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity!"

"Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, О sovran Blanc!"

"Often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow."

"Clothing the palpable and the familiar With golden exhalations of the dawn."

"The doing evil to avoid an evil Cannot be good."

"I've lived and loved."

"But still the heart doth need a language, still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names"

"The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanished. They live no longer in the faith of reason!"

"Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud — We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light."

"A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth."

"O lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live."

"I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within."

"I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!"

"Yon crescent Moon, as fix'd as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue."

"And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars."

"A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief In word, or sigh, or tear."

"Well! If the Bard was weatherwise, who made The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence."

"Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm."

"A little child, a limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds, and never seeks, Makes such a vision to the sight As fills a father’s eyes with light."

"They stood aloof, the scars remaining,— Like cliffs which had been rent asunder: A dreary sea now flows between."

"Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain."

"Each matin bell, the Baron saith, Knells us back to a world of death."

"Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!"

"That saints will aid if men will call: For the blue sky bends over all!"