The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.

Death and Dying

When I have fears that I may cease to be, Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain.

Experience

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.

Fame

Who would wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous -- who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?

Human Nature

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify -- so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.

Opinions

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing --to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party.

Poetry and Poets

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

Security

There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.

Truth

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be the truth.