"I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top."

"If a sparrow come before my window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel with it."

"I would rather be a worm than a man."

"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance."

"The poetry of the earth is never dead."