“In my estimate of the poet's true mission in this world, I hold that whatever he says should be the vital truth in relation to the thing mentioned, man or fact in story or nature.”

Making fidelity to essential truth central to the poet's calling · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter IX

• Nature
• Poetry
• Truth

“I have always found original genius of a concentrated and peculiar kind the most dangerous endowment.”

Treating intense originality as a gift that can also imperil balance · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter I

• Art
• Truth

“Tears and the beauty of art sanctify and elevate; the plain prose narrative cannot do so without intensified colour and varnish—rhetoric, in short.”

Contrasting art's transforming power with the limitations of plain prose · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Prologue

• Art
• Beauty
• Truth