“Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.”

“The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.”

“All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. 'The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being.”

“The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.”

“None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.”

“Love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being, that's the most difficult test that has been entrusted to us. The work for which all other work is merely preparation.”