All poetry is a reproduction of the tones of actual speech.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

An idea is a feat of association.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur 'Thou still …

Her every tone is music's own, Like those of morning birds, And something more than melody Dwells ever in her words.

[Literature] is organised violence committed on ordinary speech.