It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored in climate that seem to me the happiest, but those in which a long struggle of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both.
I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other.
The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.
That was my way of putting it-not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.
The sense of wellbeing! Its often with us When we are young, but then it's not noticed; And by the time one has grown to consciousness It comes less often.
If time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.
I must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.
A good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we refrained from setting before the group, what can be the aim only of the individual; and before society as a whole, what can be the aim only of the group.