Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned

You think it horrible that lust and rageShould dance attendance upon my old age;They were not such a plague when I was young;What else have I to spur me into song?

Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.

I think it better that at times like theseWe poets keep our mouths shut, for in truthWe have no gift to set a statesman right;He's had enough of meddling who can pleaseA young girl in the indolence of her youthOr an old man upon a winter's night.

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die