All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.

The divine bards are the friends of my virtue, of my intellect, of my strength. They admonish me that the gleams which flash across my mind are not mine, but God's; they had the like, and were not disobedient to the heavenly vision

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative man.

Montaigne says, "Books are a languid pleasure," but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was; he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any other than such.

Go out of the house to see the moon, and' t is mere tinsel; {it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.

It's not the destination, it's the journey.

Character The sun set, but set not his hope: Stars rose; his faith was earlier up: Fixed on the enormous galaxy, Deeper and older seemed his eye; And matched his sufferance sublime The taciturnity of time. He spoke, and words more soft than rain Brought the Age of Gold again: His action won such reverence sweet As hid all measure of the feat.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." God's thoughts are indeed higher than ours, but when he reduces his thoughts into words and reveals them in Scripture, he expects us to study them, meditate on them, and understand them—again, not exhaustively, but accurately.