“The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest— Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast.”

“A precious, mouldering pleasure ’t is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think.”

“Art is long, and Time is fleeting.”

“True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.”

“Failure: the renewable resource.”

“If you can not be a poet, be the poem.”

“ When You Are OldWhen you are old and grey and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face. And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead, And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”

“we’re lost where the mind can’t find usutterly lost”

“Poetry is prose in slow motion.”

“You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harris- no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never “weeps, he knows not why.” If Harris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.If you were to stand at night by the sea-shore with Harris, and say:”Hark! do you not hear? Is it but the mermaids singing deep below the waving waters; or sad spirits, chanting dirges for white corpses held by seaweed?” Harris would take you by the arm, and say:”I know what it is, old man; you’ve got a chill. Now you come along with me. I know a place round the corner here, where you can get a drop of the finest Scotch whisky you ever tasted- put you right in less than no time.”Harris always does know a place round the corner where you can get something brilliant in the drinking line. I believe that if you met Harris up in Paradise (supposing such a thing likely), he would immediately greet you with:”So glad you’ve come, old fellow; I’ve found a nice place round the corner here, where you can get some really first-class nectar.”

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”

“It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends”

“I wanted the past to go away, I wantedto leave it, like another country; I wantedmy life to close, and openlike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the songwhere it fallsdown over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;I wantedto hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,whoever I was, I wasalivefor a little while.”

“you will never catch up.Walk around feeling like a leafknow you could tumble at any second.Then decide what to do with your time.–The Art of Disappearing”

“But I don’t shut up and I don’t die.I liveand fight, maddeningthose who rule my country.For if I liveI fight,and if I fightI contribute to the dawn.”