Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

When I examine my mind and try to discern clearly in the matter, I cannot satisfy myself that there are any such things as poetical ideas. No truth, it seems to me, is too precious, no observation too profound, and no sentiment too exalted to be expressed in prose. The utmost I could admit is that some ideas do, while others do not, lend themselves kindly to poetical expression; and that those receive from poetry an enhancement which glorifies and almost transfigures them, and which is not perceived to be a separate thing except by analysis.

The rainy Pleiads wester, / Orion plunges prone, / The stroke of midnight ceases, / And I lie down alone.

I am not a morning person.

The laws of God, the laws of man he may keep that will and can; not I: let God and man decree laws for themselves and not for me.