“Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled,Followed their mercenary callingAnd took their wages and are dead. Their shoulder...”

“Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.”

“Oh on my breast in days hereafterLight the earth should lie,Such weight to bear is now the air,So heavy hangs the sky.(Additional Poems, X)”

“Terence, this is stupid stuff:You eat your victuals fast enough;There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,To see the rate you drink your beer.”

“Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.”

“Iniquity it is; but pass the can. My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;Our only portion is the estate of man: We want the moon, but we shall get no more. (Last Poems, IX)”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

“You can't live in dread of something for long without beginning to crave it.”

“Only the cruelest hunters set their traps with terror and trepidation.”

“Thin ribbons of fear snake bluely through you like a system of rivers. We need a cloudburst or soothing landscape fast, to still this panic. Maybe a field of dracaena, or a vast stand of sugar pine...”

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't li...”

“I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.”

“Fear is all in the mind”