That sense of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what was for him almost literal fact.

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world.

To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action.

Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.

Great passions may give us a quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us.

The way to perfection is through a series of disgusts

To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.

...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

I was aware of Darwin's views fourteen years before I adopted them and I have done so solely and entirely from an independent study of the plants themselves.[Letter to W.H. Harvey]

I'd like a nice piece of salmon that's not too pink inside and yet isn't too dry or crisp either.

I started growing my hair in December '89. I was seventeen. I signed my record deal and said I ain't combing my hair no more. I don't have too.

I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. If I were to imagine heaven, I would imagine a door opening. And he would be waiting for me there.

To be respected as an actor it doesn't help to be seen out in the clubs.

In marriage it is never having my own way. It is rather discovering our way.

It's about glowing lights and small things that are big.

What are you?" I asked. "I'm the Ghost of the Night Before Exams." "And how long did it take you to come up with that?" Jazza asked. "I'm a busy man," he replied.

So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered in the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.