"High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes; All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true. Here is the Gate to the Sea. Once you unlocked it for me; Now, since you gave me the key, shall I unlock it for you?"

"Did Older and Wiser people ... ever shout and jump with joy in their pyjamas in the moonlight? Did they ever feel just drunk with being young, and in at the start? And were Older and Wiser people's jokes ever funny?"

"The first stone is love, and that shall fail you. The second stone is hate, and that shall fail you. The third stone is knowledge, and that shall fail you. The fourth stone is prayer, and that shall fail you. The fifth stone shall not fail you."

"The fifth stone is a magic stone, my David, Made up of fear and failure, lies and loss."

"And though with sadder, still with kinder eyes, We shall behold all frailties, we shall haste To pardon, and with mellowing minds to bless."

"The listless ripple of Oblivion."

"Nearly everybody in San Francisco writes poetry. Few San Franciscans would admit this, but most of them would rather like to have their productions accidentally discovered."

"Always there is a sort of dream of air between you and the hills of California, a veil of unreality in the intervening air. It gives the hills the bloom that peaches have, or grapes in the dew."

"The train ran like a struggling fish on an almost taut line; it jerked helplessly yet strongly from side to side; twitching and tugging, it was drawn through the rippling land towards the ruthless mountains."

""Well, Ipsie, all I can say is..." But she never said anything more, so perhaps that really was all she could say."

"Sometimes I think there are two kinds of people — the autobiographists and the biographists."

"Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive."

"She drugged her brain against realities, And lived in dreams, and was with music fed."

"The illumed unconscious faces of the crowd!"

"As rich and purposeless as is the rose: Thy simple doom is to be beautiful."

"Los Angeles is a sophisticated city; it has no eccentricities and no heart."

"Beautiful Faith surrendering to Time."

"The fierce ingratitude of children loved, Ah, sting of stings!"

"The greenly silent and cool-growing night."

"What is the love of men that women seek it?"

"The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun."

"... can any tell How sorrow first doth come? Is there a step, A light step, or a dreamy drip of oars? Is there a stirring of leaves, a ruffle of wings? For it seems to me that softly, without hand, Surely she touches me."

"... when we women sin, 'tis not By art; it is not easy, it is not light; It is our agony shot through with bliss: We sway and rock and suffer ere we fall."

"A sense of something coming on the world, A crying of dead prophets from their tombs, A singing of dead poets from their graves."

"The gentle are tame birds that feed the hawk."

"To me it seems that they who grasp the world, The Kingdom and the power and the glory, Must pay with deepest misery of spirit, Atoning unto God for a brief brightness, And ever ransom, like this rigid king, The outward victory with inward loss."

"A mighty spearsman, and a seaman wise, A hunter, and at need a lord of lies."

"True to a vision, steadfast to a dream."

"When did a lover heed a mother's woe?"

"I would not take life but on terms of death, That sting in the wine of being, salt of its feast."

"She hath no skill in living—but to love."

"We plough the fields, and scatter The good seed on the land; But it is fed and watered By 's almighty hand: He sends the snow in winter, The warmth to swell the grain, The breezes and the sunshine, And soft refreshing rain."

"To have fall'n, my country crying, He has play'd an English part, Had been better far than dying Of a griev'd and broken heart."

"Heed, oh heed! my fatal story, I am Hosier's injur'd ghost; You who now have purchas'd glory At this place where I was lost."

"Sent in this foul clime to languish Think what thousands fell in vain, Wasted with disease and anguish, Not in glorious battle slain."

"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light, I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night."

"What, for us, are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles? What, for us, the goddess Pleasure, with her meretricious wiles?"

"As, near Porto Bello lying, On the gently swelling flood, At midnight, with streamers flying, Our triumphant navy rode."

"Hence with all my train attending From their oozy tombs below, Through the hoary foam ascending Here I feed my constant woe."

"It requires genius to make a good pun—some men of bright parts can't reach it."

"Is it so, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer most? That the strongest wander farthest, and more hopelessly are lost? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain, And the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain? — "I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.""

"Reach me down my Tycho Brahé, — I would know him when we meet, When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet."

"After this proud foe subduing, When your patriot friends you see, Think on vengeance for my ruin, And for England sham'd in me."

"Every body about me seem'd happy—but every body seem'd in a hurry to be happy somewhere else."

"Vanity, like murder, will out."

"Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer! List, ye landsmen, all to me; Messmates, hear a brother sailor Sing the dangers of the sea."