“Greatness cannot often claim virtue by inheritance.”

Separating rank from moral worth · Dedicatory epistle to 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, 1633

• Greatness
• Inheritance
• Virtue

“Where a truth of merit hath a general warrant, there love is but a debt, acknowledgement a justice.”

Treating praise of real worth as a duty rather than a courtesy · Dedicatory epistle to 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, 1633

• Justice
• Love
• Merit

“Yes, there is a luck in most things, and in none more than in being born at the right time.”

On how the age a writer enters can shape reputation as much as talent · Critical prose, commonly cited

• Chance
• Fame
• Time

“No work of art has real import, none endures, unless the maker has something to say.”

Expression without a thought worth uttering does not last · Lecture, The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892)

• Art
• Expression
• Meaning

“A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus become his best encourager.”

Criticism as recognition of the strongest gift, not only fault-finding · Critical essay

• Criticism
• Encouragement
• Poetry

“Fashion is a potency in art, making it hard to judge between the temporary and the lasting.”

A caution against mistaking the taste of the hour for enduring work · Essay, Poets of America (1885)

• Art
• Judgement
• Taste

“Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music.”

Sincerity of feeling set above studied effect · Essay, Poets of America (1885)

• Emotion
• Poetry
• Sincerity

“The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.”

Poetry as making, not as a substitute for argument · Critical essay

• Creation
• Expression
• Poetry

“The poet who does not revere his art, and believe in its sovereignty, is not born to wear the purple.”

Faith in the art itself as a condition of lasting poetic rank · Essay, Poets of America (1885)

• Devotion
• Poetry
• Poets

“Only when it takes wings does language become poetry.”

Rhythm and imaginative lift as the mark that separates verse from ordinary speech · Lecture, The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892)

• Imagination
• Language
• Poetry

“Poetry is rhythmical, imaginative language, expressing the invention, taste, thought, passion, and insight of the human soul.”

His compact definition of poetry as made speech, not mere feeling · Lecture, The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892)

• Definition
• Imagination
• Poetry

“Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine arts; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence.”

On why verse looks easy and is unforgiving of the half-gifted · Essay, Victorian Poets (1875)

• Art
• Excellence
• Poetry

“When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

Popular as the seed of the duck test, though the wording's origin is disputed · Commonly attributed remark; no verse or letter source has been firmly shown

• Judgement
• Observation
• Wit

“It demands simple sentiments that come direct from the heart.”

His measure of a poem that would hold a listening room · Recollection of his platform readings, biographical sketch

• Heart
• Readers
• Simplicity

“The public desires nothing but what is absolutely natural, and so perfectly natural as to be fairly artless. It cannot tolerate affectation.”

What years of reading aloud taught him audiences would bear · Recollection of his platform readings, biographical sketch

• Poetry
• Readers
• Simplicity

“Romantic things are good in Art and Poetry, but a Woman's heart is worth them all.”

Setting living affection above the romance of books · Letter to Elizabeth Kahle, 1879

• Art
• Heart
• Love

“I have many friends, but more enemies, and can scarcely tell which I most enjoy, for I really enjoy being hated by some people.”

A young poet's relish for opposition as much as for friendship · Letter to Elizabeth Kahle, 21 February 1879

• Character
• Friendship
• Humour

“I write sentimental verses occasionally, simply because I don't believe in love and am anxious to convince myself of my error.”

A bachelor's half-jesting account of why he kept writing of love · Letter to Elizabeth Kahle, 21 February 1879

• Humour
• Love
• Poetry

“If pathetic, with your own tears baptized and made good as mirth.”

Pathos earned only when the writer's own feeling stands behind it · Letter to Madison Cawein, 3 July 1890

• Poetry
• Sincerity
• Sorrow

“Keep 'em all sunny and sweet and wholesome clean to the core, or, if ever tragic, with sound hopes ultimate.”

Advice that even sorrow in verse should keep a hope at the end · Letter to Madison Cawein, 3 July 1890

• Advice
• Hope
• Poetry

“I notice the poems we love the best — the poems that really live — have always blood and pulse and heart-warmth in them. There's the thing!”

Living verse, for him, was the verse that still felt warm · Letter to an old friend, 4 March 1883

• Feeling
• Heart
• Poetry

“All melancholy themes are pets of mine — positively; but I am growing to avoid them as much as possible.”

A turn away from gloom toward the poems he thought would last · Letter to an old friend, 4 March 1883

• Change
• Melancholy
• Poetry

“My idea is to have it less profound than entertaining.”

A plain statement of the pleasure he meant his work to give · Letter, 1879

• Pleasure
• Poetry
• Purpose

“For some years I've been striving to ferret out the one evident lack of our whole art guild; and I've struck it: It's business. We naturally hate that, and therefore avoid it. That's why we're all victims.”

On artists undone by their dislike of the practical side of the trade · Letter to Rudyard Kipling, 1893

• Art
• Artists
• Commerce