“Scenery is fine -but human nature is finer”

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

“We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.”

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”

“If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.”

“t this is human life: the war, the deeds,The disappointment, the anxiety,Imagination's struggles, far and nigh,All human; bearing in themselves this good,That they are still the air, the subtle food,To make us feel existence, and to shewHow quiet death is.”

“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death.Bright Star”