"Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down, Where a green grassy turf is all I crave, With here and there a violet bestrewn, Fast by a brook or fountain’s murmuring wave; And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave!"

"At the close of the day when the hamlet is still, And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, When naught but the torrent is heard on the hill, And naught but the nightingale’s song in the grove."

"Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined? No; let thy heaven-taught soul to heaven aspire, To fancy, freedom, harmony, resigned; Ambition's groveling crew forever left behind."

"When squint-eyed Slander plies the unhallow'd tongue, From poison'd maw when Treason weaves his line, And Muse apostate (infamy to song!) Grovels, low muttering, at Sedition's shrine."

"Every man of learning wishes, that his son may be learned; and that not so much from a view to pecuniary advantage, as from a desire to have him supplied with the means of useful instruction and liberal amusement."

"Laws, as we read in ancient sages, Have been like cobwebs in all ages: Cobwebs for little flies are spread, And laws for little folks are made; But if an insect of renown, Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone, Be caught in quest of sport or plunder, The flimsy fetter flies in sunder."

"What is a law, if those who make it Become the forwardest to break it?"

"Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar?"

"Though richest hues the peacock's plumes adorn, Yet horror screams from his discordant throat. Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn, While warbling larks on russet pinions float; Or seek at noon the woodland scene remote, Where the gray linnets carol from the hill: O let them ne'er, with artificial note, To please a tyrant, strain the little bill, But sing what heaven inspires, and wander where they will."

"Then here’s to the oak, the brave old oak, Who stands in his pride alone! And still flourish he, a hale green tree, When a hundred years are gone!"

"A song to the oak, the brave old oak, Who hath ruled in the greenwood long!"

"Now gold hath sway; we all obey And a ruthless king is he; But he never shall send our ancient friend To be tost on the stormy sea."

"Let us try to see things from their better side: You complain about seeing thorny rose bushes; Me, I rejoice and give thanks to the gods That thorns have roses."

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

"Si l'on veut abolir la peine de mort en ce cas, que MM. les assassins commencent: qu'ils ne tuent pas, on ne les tuera pas."

"No hunter of the Age of Fable Had need to buckle in his belt; More game than he was ever able To take ran wild upon the veldt; Each night with roast he stocked his table, Then procreated on the pelt. And that is how, of course, there came At last to be more men than game."

"Darwin's daughters have no tails, Yet a reminiscent motion Agitates the lovely frails At the seat of amputation. Charles called Eve and Adam lies And denied the garden state, Yet the gait of Paradise Could not wholly liquidate."

"Remembering how I planned to break the journey, to drive My own car one day, to have choice in my hands and my foot upon power, To see through the trumpet throat of vertiginous perspective My urgent Now explode continually into flower, To be the Eater of Time, a poet and not that sly Anus of mind the historian. It was so simple and plain To live by the sole, insatiable influx of the eye. But something went wrong with the plan: I am still on the train."

"Adam had learned the jolly deed of kind: He took her in his arms and there and then Like the clean beasts, embracing from behind, Began in joy to found the breed of men."

"Quaking muscles in the act of birth, Between her legs a pigmy face appear, And the first murderer lay upon the earth."

"And her five cities, like teeming sores, Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state Where second-hand Europeans pullulate Timidly on the edge of alien shores. Yet there are some like me turn gladly home From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find The Arabian desert of the human mind, Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come, Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes Which is called civilization over there."

"Her bulk of beauty, her stupendous grace Challenged the lion heart in his puny dust. Proudly his Moment looked him in the face: He rose to meet it as a hero must; Climbed the white mountain of unravished snow, Planted his tiny flag upon the peak. The smooth drifts, scarcely breathing, lay below. She did not take the trouble to smile or speak. And afterwards, it may have been in play, The enormous girl rolled over and squashed him flat; And as she could not send him home that way, Used him thereafter as a bedside mat."

"The discourse on the Text should itself be nothing other than text, research, textual activity, since the Text is that social space which leaves no language safe, outside, nor any subject of the enunciation in position as judge, master, analyst, confessor, decoder. The theory of the Text can coincide only with a practice of writing."

"Barthes's discovery and articulation of the "new" liberatory category of perception and deciphering, semiotic-mythology, belongs to the praxis of his heroic mythologist, alone. This unfortunate theoretical strategy makes the articulation of a coalitional consciousness in social struggle impossible to imagine or enact. ... His terminologies appropriate the technologies of the oppressed for use by academic classes."

"Whereas the work is understood to be traceable to a source (through a process of derivation or "filiation"), the Text is without a source — the "author" a mere "guest" at the reading of the Text."

"When I was a student I was assigned “Mythologies” and “A Lover’s Discourse,” by Roland Barthes, and felt at once that something momentous had happened to me, that I had met a writer who had changed my course in life somehow; and looking back now, I think he did."

"The Text is not a definitive object."

"A work has two levels of meaning: literal and concealed. A Text, on the other hand is engaged in a movement … a deferral … a dilation of meaning … the play of signification. Metonymy — the association of part to whole — characterized the logic of the Text. In this sense the Text is "radically symbolic" and lacks closure."

"The Text is plural. Which is not simply to say that it has several meanings, but that it accomplishes the very plural of meaning: an irreducible (and not merely an acceptable) plural. The Text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an overcrossing; thus it answers not to an interpretation, even a liberal one, but to an explosion, a dissemination."

"Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all history. In it, history evaporates."

"By reducing any quality to quantity, myth economizes intelligence: it understands reality more cheaply."

"Statistically, myth is on the right. There, it is essential, well-fed, sleek, expensive, garrulous, it invents itself ceaselessly. It takes hold of everything, all aspects of the law, of morality, of aesthetics, of diplomacy, of household equipment, of Literature, of entertainment."

"The petit-bourgeois is a man unable to imagine the Other. If he comes face to face with him, he blinds himself, ignores and denies him, or else transforms him into himself."

"What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself."

"La forme bâtarde de la culture de masse est la répétition honteuse: on répète les contenus, les schèmes idéologiques, le gommage des contradictions, mais on varie les formes superficielles: toujours des livres, des émissions, des films nouveaux, des faits divers, mais toujours le même sens."

"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire."

"Encratic language (the language produced and spread under the protection of power) is statutorily a language of repetition; all official institutions of language are repeating machines: schools, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words."

"The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized!"

"The bourgeoisie is defined as the social class which does not want to be named."

"Bourgeois norms are experienced as the evident laws of a natural order—the further the bourgeois class propagates its representations, the more naturalized they become."

"Myth is depoliticized speech."

"The bourgeoisie hides the fact that it is the bourgeoisie and thereby produces myth; revolution announces itself openly as revolution and thereby abolishes myth."

"The producer. This is a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act."