“Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”

“Silence does not always mark wisdom.”

“No mind is thoroughly well-organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.”

“He went like one that hath been stunn'd,And is of sense forlorn:A sadder and a wiser manHe rose the morrow morn.”

“You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, & always in the Moult, & my whole Note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow.”

“What if you slept And what if In your sleep You dreamed And what if In your dream You went to heaven And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower And what if When you awoke You had that flower in you hand Ah, what then?”

“Then all the charm Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape the other.”