“No man with a sense of humour could have exposed himself to those occasionally just criticisms of the almost comic positions of some of his characters, verging on coarseness.”

Arguing that humour can serve as a form of artistic self-criticism · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“It is very interesting to see, in connexion with Wordsworth's adoration of the beauties of Nature, that his name and fame are incorporated with the scenery of the Lakes.”

Linking a poet's lasting fame with the landscape that shaped his vision · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Fame
• Nature
• Poetry

“The expedition was interesting as a specimen of what I may call a very laudable literary enthusiasm, of which I shall be very glad to see more among the youth of this day.”

Celebrating youthful literary enthusiasm as something worth renewing · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Hope
• Poetry

“He is essentially the poet of youth; he is the embodiment, as it were, of youth and poetry in the richness of the imagination and in the abundance of melodious power.”

Seeing Keats as an embodiment of youthful imagination and musical richness · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Childhood
• Music
• Poetry

“I think gatherings representative of literary homage, and also of personal interest in the poets in whose works we still take delight, are not only very just in themselves, but extremely useful in the cause of literature.”

Defending literary commemoration as useful to the continuing life of literature · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Memory
• Poetry

“None the less have those verses, thus modestly produced, permeated the hearts of millions of men and women, and, so to say, incorporated themselves in the English language.”

Describing how quietly published verse can enter a culture's shared language · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Fame
• Memory
• Poetry

“Gray's perfect combination of sentiment and form may justly place him on the pedestal he occupies.”

Praising the marriage of emotional feeling and formal control · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Art
• Beauty
• Poetry

“When I define Gray as a poet of sentiment, you will understand that I distinguish him from the poet of passion and the poet of imagery.”

Distinguishing poetic sentiment from passion and imagery · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Art
• Poetry

“For this prominent problem of the genius of Gray every serious critic will attempt his own solution.”

Seeing criticism as an individual search for the nature of genius · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“I remember, when a student at Cambridge, going with Arthur Hallam to call on Coleridge, who received us as Goethe or as Socrates might have received us.”

Remembering Coleridge as a figure of almost classical intellectual authority · Speech, Coleridge bust unveiling, Westminster Abbey, 7 May 1885

• Friendship
• Memory
• Poetry

“If the grief is only a half grief, conjured up by the imagination to play with like a toy, then, in my opinion, the bard had better hold his tongue.”

Rejecting manufactured grief as a basis for poetic utterance · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Death
• Poetry
• Truth

“If a poet really sorrows over the death of a friend to that degree that he cannot, as a relief to the soul, refrain from pouring out his sorrow in song, I think his utterance should be natural and straightforward.”

Insisting that genuine grief in poetry should sound natural rather than affected · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Death
• Friendship
• Poetry

“Definitions of poetry indeed are always more or less unintelligible.”

Wryly resisting attempts to define poetry too neatly · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Poetry
• Truth

“God made me a business woman, and I made myself a poet.”

Summing up her determination to create a poetic identity through deliberate effort · Reported quip, widely cited in biographies

• Art
• Poetry

“The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture.”

Presenting poetic creation as an imperative rather than a voluntary pastime · Memoir, later collected with her poetical works

• Art
• Poetry

“I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point.”

Describing composition as an intensely physical as well as mental experience · Memoir, later collected with her poetical works

• Art
• Poetry

“I never deny poems when they come; whatever I am doing, whatever I am writing, I lay it aside and attend to the arriving poem.”

Describing poetic inspiration as something demanding immediate attention · Essay, The Process of Making Poetry

• Art
• Poetry

“Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented.”

Defining poetry through concentrated thought and emotional force · Tendencies in Modern American Poetry

• Poetry
• Truth

“For the more important part of the book, the poems must speak for themselves.”

Giving the creative work precedence over theoretical explanation · Preface, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

• Art
• Poetry

“Schools are for those who can confine themselves within them. Perhaps it is a weakness in me that I cannot.”

A characteristically independent rejection of restrictive artistic schools · Preface, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

• Art
• Poetry

“I cannot see why, because certain manners suit certain emotions and subjects, it should be considered imperative for an author to employ no others.”

Defending the artist's freedom to choose different forms for different purposes · Preface, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

• Art
• Poetry

“It is a fluid and changing form, now prose, now verse, and permitting a great variety of treatment.”

Celebrating the flexibility available when conventional boundaries are loosened · Preface, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

• Art
• Poetry

“The desire to 'quintessentialize,' to head-up an emotion until it burns white-hot, seems to be an integral part of the modern temper.”

Describing modern poetry as an art of concentrated emotional intensity · Preface, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

• Art
• Poetry

“Merely chopping prose lines into lengths does not produce cadence, it is constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time.”

Rejecting the idea that free verse is simply prose divided into lines · Preface, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

• Art
• Music
• Poetry