“Nature does not implant desires for nothing, nor endow us with faculties in vain.”

Arguing that natural human capacities invite their own fulfilment · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

• Growth
• Humanity
• Nature

“Though the man does not die altogether, part of him dies, part of him starves to death.”

Describing the loss caused when a natural hunger for knowledge goes unfed · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

• Growth
• Knowledge
• Life

“We study, they say, not that we may earn a livelihood, but that we may transform and beautify our inner nature by culture.”

Summarising the traditional humanist defence of learning · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

• Culture
• Education
• Growth

“Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, do some good to the reader.”

Suggesting that habitual pleasurable reading gradually improves judgement · Lecture, The Name and Nature of Poetry, 1933

• Growth
• Literature
• Reading

“The pursuit of knowledge, like the pursuit of righteousness, is part of man's duty to himself.”

Making intellectual growth a matter of personal duty · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

• Duty
• Growth
• Knowledge

“All men have possibilities of developing this vision.”

Presenting heightened perception as a human capacity rather than a rare gift · Essay, Notes on Thought and Vision

• Growth
• Humanity
• Imagination

“Aim of men and women of highest development is equilibrium, balance, growth of the three at once.”

Defining fulfilment as the balanced development of body, mind and visionary awareness · Essay, Notes on Thought and Vision

• Growth
• Mind
• Wisdom

“I began to pick faults with Longfellow and Tennyson.”

Marks the transition from youthful admiration to independent critical judgement · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Criticism
• Growth
• Poetry

“Learning is a hell of a lot of fun. Don't see why can't keep it up all my life. Certainly plenty to learn.”

Expressing an enduring appetite for reading, study and intellectual growth · Letter to Malcolm Cowley, 14 November 1945

• Growth
• Knowledge
• Learning

“With each new figure somehow the gamut broadens and the technical control improves.”

Seeing literary development as both an expansion of range and an increase in craftsmanship · Essay, The Negro in American Literature

• Growth
• Poetry
• Skill

“These new talents were new roots in a soil not too richly fertilized by the chemistry of original song.”

Using organic imagery to describe the emergence of new American poets · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1924

• Growth
• Originality
• Poetry

“I do not believe in purification without suffering, in progress without struggle, in virtue without temptation.”

Linking moral growth with the necessity of resistance, difficulty and testing · Letter to Isa Blagden, c. 1850

• Growth
• Struggle
• Suffering

“For I think the world wider than I once thought it, and I see God's love broader than I once saw it.”

Expressing the expansion of her religious understanding through solitude and suffering · Letter to H. S. Boyd, March 1845

• Faith
• Growth
• Love

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault.”

Presenting life as an inward process of moral and emotional growth · Letter to Robert Browning, 5 March 1845

• Growth
• Life
• Wisdom

“I am started. The tugs have left me; I feel the great swelling of the open sea taking my galleon.”

Using a maritime image to describe the exhilaration of emerging artistic independence · Letter to Susan Owen, 31 December 1917

• Growth
• Independence
• Poetry

“I go out of this year a Poet, my dear Mother, as which I did not enter it. I am held peer by the Georgians; I am a poet's poet.”

Marking his growing confidence that he had found his authentic poetic voice · Letter to Susan Owen, 31 December 1917

• Growth
• Identity
• Poetry

“The object of education is to fit the child for the life of the man.”

Defining education as preparation for the responsibilities of adult life · Essay, Wings and the Child, Chapter IX: Praise and Punishment

• Childhood
• Education
• Growth

“But it must be by your own exertions, my dearest boy, that you must render yourself qualified to avail yourself of the opportunities which you may have offered to you.”

Emphasising personal effort in making use of opportunity · Letter to Walter Scott, 17 March 1821

• Growth
• Independence
• Work

“But from that evening some floodgate had broken in me and I was beginning to be awake.”

Describing the transformative effect of discovering a living community devoted to poetry · Memoir, The World at My Shoulder, 1938

• Experience
• Growth
• Poetry

“Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress.”

Suggesting that unseen growth may occur precisely when progress seems absent · Letter to a friend in Texas, 1 December 1873

• Growth
• Humility
• Perseverance

“God never places us in any position in which we can not grow.”

Seeing difficult circumstances as opportunities for inward growth · Letter to a friend in Texas, 1 December 1873

• Faith
• Growth
• Perseverance