“Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,Lover of loneliness, and wandering,Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!Thee must I praise above all other gloriesThat smile us on to tell delightful stories.”

“Above all things, I delight in listening to stories, and sometimes in telling them.”

“Let me begin by telling you that I was in love. An ordinary statement, to be sure, but not an ordinary fact, for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportian suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many things which the beloved must come only to symbolize; the true beloveds of this world are in their lovers's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favourite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.”

“I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.”

“Let us away, my love, with happy speed;There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,- Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead.Awake! arise! my love and fearless be,For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee.”

“There are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other loves, and I think that she must have been one.”