“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”

“Ye are better than all the balladsThat ever were sung or said;For ye are living poems,And all the rest are dead.”

“The Children's HourBetween the dark and the daylight,When the night is beginning to lower,Comes a pause in the day's occupations,That is known as the Children's Hour.I hear in the chamber above meThe patter of little feet,The sound of a door that is opened,And voices soft and sweet.From my study I see in the lamplight,Descending the broad hall stair,Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,And Edith with golden hair.A whisper, and then a silence:Yet I know by their merry eyesThey are plotting and planning togetherTo take me by surprise.A sudden rush from the stairway,A sudden raid from the hall!By three doors left unguardedThey enter my castle wall!They climb up into my turretO'er the arms and back of my chair;If I try to escape, they surround me;They seem to be everywhere.They almost devour me with kisses,Their arms about me entwine,Till I think of the Bishop of BingenIn his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,Because you have scaled the wall,Such an old mustache as I amIs not a match for you all!I have you fast in my fortress,And will not let you depart,But put you down into the dungeonIn the round-tower of my heart.And there will I keep you forever,Yes, forever and a day,Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,And moulder in dust away!”

“...Tis the center to which all gravitates. One finds no rest elswhere than here. There may be other cities that please us for a while, but Rome alone completely satisfies. It becomes to all a second native land by predilection, and not by accident of birth alone.”

“I have you fast in my fortress,And will not let you depart,But put you down into the dungeon,In the round-tower of my heart,And there will I keep you forever,Yes, forever and a day,Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,And moulder in the dust away!”

“Ah! What would the world be to usIf the children were no more?We should dread the desert behind usWorse than the dark before.”

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”