The purely Great Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, thou nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.

An umbrella is of no avail against a Scotch mist.

Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, / The morning-stars their ancient music make.

No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer.

May is a pious fraud of the almanac, / A ghastly parody of real spring

And what is so rare as a day in June? / Then, if ever, come perfect days; / Then heaven tries the earth if it be tune, / And over it softly her warm ear lays: / Whether we look, or whether we listen, / We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; / Every clod feels a stir of might, / An instinct within it that reaches and towers, / And, grasping blindly above it for light, / Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers...

The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgement.

On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.