Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act...The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach.

Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimin…

The most important truth which has ever been uttered, and the greatest discovery ever made in the moral world.

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out ... and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

Ce qui fait le poete, n'est-ce pas l'amour, la recherche desesperee du moindre rayon de soleil d'autrefois jouant sur le parquet d'une chambre d'enfant?

Klopstock was questioned regarding the meaningof a passage in his poem. He replied, 'God and I both knew what it meant once; now God alone knows.'

True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.