“She lived, we'll say,A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,A quiet life, which was not life at all(But that she had not lived enough to know)”

“O Life,How oft we throw it off and think, — 'Enough,Enough of life in so much! — here's a causeFor rupture; — herein we must break with Life,Or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged,Maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell Life!'— And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyesAnd think all ended. — Then, Life calls to usIn some transformed, apocryphal, new voice,Above us, or below us, or around . .Perhaps we name it Nature's voice, or Love's,Tricking ourselves, because we are more ashamedTo own our compensations than our griefs:Still, Life's voice! — still, we make our peace with Life.”

“Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.”

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.”

“I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me.”

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go.”

“What is art but the life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?”