“The lunatic, the lover, and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.”

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends.The lunatic, the lover and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.”

“The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.”

“One sees more devils than vast hell can hold”

“I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us.”

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“But love, first learnèd in a lady's eyes,Lives not alone immurèd in the brain,But, with the motion of all elements,Courses as swift as thought in every power,And gives to every power a double power,Above their functions and their offices.It adds a precious seeing to the eye;A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;A lover's ears will hear the lowest sound,When the suspicious head of theft is stopped:Love's feeling is more soft and sensibleThan are the tender horns of cockled snails:Love's tongue proves dainty Baccus gross in taste.For valour, is not love a Hercules,Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musicalAs bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;And when Love speaks, the voice of all the godsMakes heaven drowsy with the harmony.Never durst poet touch a pen to writeUntil his ink were tempered with Love's sighs.”