"O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor..." - Quote by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“In your patience ye are strong.”

“For poets (bear the word) Half-poets even, are still whole democrats.”

“Deep violets, you liken to The kindest eyes that look on you, Without a thought disloyal.”

“It is the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoy it completely.”

“The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.”

“Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet: he it is who makes the truest use of the pine-who does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane. . . .”

“Reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.”

“If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.”

“If anyone can refute me-show me I'm making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective-I'l l gladly change. It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.”