“Our own age has always repelled me, so that, but for the love of those dear to me, I should have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own.”

Original: Nostra aetas me semper offendit, adeo ut, nisi me carorum amor retinuisset, qualibet alia nasci maluerim quam hac. — The classic humanist preference for antiquity over the present. · Letter to Posterity (Posteritati) (Latin)

• Exile
• Past
• Time

“I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things, when even the pagan philosophers had long taught that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself.”

Original: Clausi librum iratus mihi quod terrestria adhuc mirarer, qui vel a philosophis ethnicis didicissem pridem nihil praeter animum esse mirabile, cui magno nihil magnum est extra se. — After opening Augustine on the summit, he turns from landscape to conscience. · Letter on the ascent of Mont Ventoux, Familiares IV, 1 (Latin)

• Reflection
• Soul
• Wonder

“Today I climbed the highest mountain in this region, not improperly called Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great a height had to offer.”

Original: Altissimum regionis huius montem, quem non immerito Ventosum vocant, hodie, sola videndi cupiditate ductus, ascendi. — The opening of a famous letter that turns a climb into an examination of the inner life. · Letter to Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro on the ascent of Mont Ventoux, Familiares IV, 1 (Latin)

• Curiosity
• Nature
• Self Knowledge

“I have always held wealth in extreme contempt, not because riches are undesirable in themselves, but because I hated the toil and anxiety that cling to them inseparably.”

Original: Divitiarum contemptor eximius: non quod divitias non optarem, sed labores curasque oderam, opum comites inseparabiles. — A self-portrait that values quiet study over the burdens of fortune. · Letter to Posterity (Posteritati) (Latin)

• Solitude
• Wealth
• Work

“Gold, silver, gems, purple cloth, a marble house and a well-tended field give only a mute and surface pleasure; books delight us through and through, they speak with us, they counsel us, and they join us in a living intimacy.”

Original: Aurum, argentum, gemme, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus ager... mutum et superficiale gaudium afferunt; libri delectant penitus, loquuntur, consulunt, viva quadam et arguta familiaritate se nobis inserunt. — Sets the companionship of reading against the silence of luxury. · Letter to Giovanni Anchiseo, Familiares III, 18 (Latin)

• Books
• Friendship
• Pleasure

“I cannot get enough of books. I may already have more than I need, yet with books, as with other things, success in finding them only whets the desire for more.”

Original: Libris satiari nequeo. Et habeo plures forte quam oportet; sed sicut in ceteris rebus, sic et in libris accidit: querendi successus avaritie calcar est. — A humanist confession of bibliophilia that treats books as living companions rather than ornaments. · Letter to Giovanni Anchiseo, Familiares III, 18 (Latin)

• Books
• Desire
• Learning

“I humbly require you to be good unto me. I have as I perceive a great many more foes than friends, and am like, your goodness reserved, to be trodden under the feet and to be made a slave.”

A courtier's plea from a recusant peer who felt isolated after withdrawing from public life · Letter to Thomas Cromwell, 28 April 1536

• Fear
• Need
• Power

“To stuffe a preface with praise of this boke, or with exhorting you to reding of it, were in a matter not doubtfull to take fond peine not nedefull.”

Refusing empty puffery where the book's use is already plain · Printer's preface to a law-book edition

• Books
• Honesty
• Prefaces

“How unperfect the books of the laws of England were before, what price the scarceness had raised, the most part marvelously mangled, and no small part no where to be gotten.”

On restoring legal texts that scarcity and bad copying had ruined · Printer's preface to gentlemen studious of the laws of England

• Books
• Law
• Work

“And I exhort the vnlearned, by reding to learne to be more skilfull, and to purge that swinelike grossenesse, that maketh the swete maierome not to smell to their delight.”

Urging the untrained reader to refine taste through verse · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Education
• Reading
• Taste

“If parhappes some mislike the statelinesse of stile remoued from the rude skill of common eares: I aske help of the learned to defend their learned frendes, the authors of this work.”

Asking cultivated readers to stand up for elevated English style · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Learning
• Readers
• Style

“And for this point (good reder) thine own profit and pleasure, in these presently, and moe hereafter, shal answere for my defence.”

Letting the reader's gain stand as the printer's justification · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Pleasure
• Profit
• Readers

“It resteth nowe (gentle reder) that thou thinke it not evill doon, to publish, to the honor of the Englishe tong, and for profit of the studious of Englishe eloquence, those workes which the vngentle horders vp of such treasure have heretofore envied thee.”

Justifying print as public service against private hoarding of courtly verse · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Freedom
• Poetry
• Readers

“That our tong is able in that kynde to do as praiseworthely as the rest, the honorable stile of the noble earle of Surrey, and the weightinesse of the depewitted sir Thomas Wyat the elders verse, with severall graces in sondry good Englishe writers, doe show abundantly.”

Claiming English as equal to Latin and Italian for lyric eloquence · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• England
• Language
• Poetry

“That to have well written in verse, yea and in small parcels, deserveth great praise, the works of divers Latines, Italians, and other, do prove sufficiently.”

Defending short lyric as a form worthy of the same honour given to classical and Italian verse · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Language
• Poetry
• Praise

“The objects of artificial life are, per se, less fitted for the purposes of poetry than those of nature, and than the passions of the human heart.”

His summary of why satires of manners stand below nature and passion · Writings in the Pope controversy

• Art
• Nature
• Poetry

“We have been so often told that poetry exists in inanimate objects, that we seem to believe it, and thus become the dupes of our own phraseology.”

A warning against treating picturesque objects as if they were themselves the source of verse · Prose on poetry in the Pope controversy

• Language
• Nature
• Poetry

“In the highest kinds of poetry the themes or passions handled should be of the general or elemental kind, and not the transient manners of any society.”

He ranks enduring human passion above the polish of a particular age · Critical writings on the principles of poetry

• Passion
• Poetry
• Society

“Images drawn from nature are poetically finer than those drawn from art.”

The brief formula that set him against Byron, Campbell and the Pope party · Critical writings on Pope and the principles of poetry

• Art
• Nature
• Poetry

“They have been distinguished for pourtraying the passions of the human heart, rather than manners of particular periods of society.”

Great poetry, for him, treats elemental feeling rather than fashionable social types · The Invariable Principles of Poetry, 1819

• Humanity
• Passion
• Poetry

“Those who have attained the highest rank in poetry, as Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton, will be found invariably to have drawn their poetical imagery more from nature than from art.”

The central claim of his long controversy over Pope and poetic rank · The Invariable Principles of Poetry, letter to Thomas Campbell, 1819

• Art
• Nature
• Poetry

“It is a consolation that, from youth to age, I have found no line I wished to blot, or departed a moment from the severer taste which I imbibed from the simplest and purest models of classical composition.”

Late in life he claims a lifelong fidelity to classical restraint · Preface to St John in Patmos, 1832

• Integrity
• Poetry
• Taste

“I thought nothing about the strict Italian model; the verses naturally flowed in unpremeditated harmony, as my ear directed.”

He privileges ear and unity of feeling over inherited sonnet rules · Introduction, Scenes and Shadows of Days Departed, 1837

• Music
• Originality
• Poetry

“I confined myself to fourteen lines, because fourteen lines seemed best adapted to unity of sentiment.”

The sonnet is chosen as a vessel for one mood rather than as an Italian formal exercise · Introduction, Scenes and Shadows of Days Departed, 1837

• Feeling
• Form
• Poetry