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I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is, prose = words in their best order – poetry = the best words in the best order.
Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
Poetry: the best words in the best order.
Swans sing before they die – ’twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.
The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.