The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain.
The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.
I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.