“What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?”

“All men live in sufferingI know as few can know,Whether they take the upper roadOr stay content on the low.”

“Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

“All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.”

“The women that I picked spoke sweet and lowAnd yet gave tongue. "Hound voices" were they all.”

“I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.”

“If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.”

“The object of Art is to give life a shape.”

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Ideas are the very coinage of your brain.”

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”

“If ever thou shalt love,In the sweet pangs of it remember me;For such as I am all true lovers are,Unstaid and skittish in all motions elseSave in the constant image of the creatureThat is beloved.”

“Love sees with the heart and not with mind.”

“I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.”

“He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache”

“I am not prone to weeping as our sex commonly are; the want of which vain dew perchance shall dry your pities;but I have that honorable grief lodged here which burns worse than tears drown.”

“There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently”

“But shall we wear these glories for a day? Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?”

“The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.”

“In the country, without any interference from the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families.”

“If ever thou be'st bound in thy scarf and beaten, thou shalt find what it is to be proud of thy bondage.”

“And makes me poor indeed.”

“Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,To make my end too sudden.”