“The moon was shining upon the lake, and the hills were dark shadows.”

A moment of quiet nocturnal perception and solitude · Grasmere Journal

• Nature
• Solitude

“We saw a few daffodils close to the water side.”

A concise observation that became memorable through its precise attention to place · Grasmere Journal

• Beauty
• Nature

“They looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.”

Capturing the lively movement and joy Dorothy found in the natural world · Grasmere Journal

• Joy
• Nature

“I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them.”

A vivid record of wonder before an ordinary scene transformed by attention · Grasmere Journal

• Beauty
• Nature

“I hate writing, I love having written.”

Capturing the tension between creative labour and artistic satisfaction · Conversation / aphorism

• Art
• Poetry

“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say no in any of them.”

A sharp observation about charm, language and willpower · Conversation, referring to a celebrated linguist

• Love
• Truth

“You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.”

A playful defence of independent intelligence · Conversation / aphorism

• Humour
• Truth

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

Celebrating curiosity as both remedy and incurable impulse · Aphorism, commonly attributed

• Art
• Joy

“I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.”

A sardonic dismissal of reputation and literary gossip · Conversation / aphorism

• Fame
• Truth

“The power of faith is not in the person who exercises it but in the object in which it rests.”

Directing attention away from the believer’s strength and towards the object of faith · Religious prose

• Faith
• Hope

“The true poet is he who can give to common things an uncommon beauty.”

Celebrating the transformation of ordinary experience through poetry · Critical remark, as commonly attributed

• Beauty
• Nature
• Poetry

“A work of art is beautiful when it expresses the deepest truth of the human soul.”

Linking aesthetic beauty with inner truth · Prose statement, as commonly attributed

• Art
• Beauty
• Truth

“The artist’s function is to create beauty, and to leave the interpretation of it to others.”

Emphasising artistic creation over explanatory commentary · Prose statement, as commonly attributed

• Art
• Beauty

“The purpose of art is not to copy nature, but to create a beautiful equivalent.”

Distinguishing artistic creation from simple imitation · Artistic statement, as commonly attributed

• Art
• Beauty
• Nature

“The only thing that justifies the existence of a work of art is that it should be beautiful.”

Treating beauty as art’s essential justification · Prose statement, commonly attributed to Rossetti

• Art
• Beauty

“The human race is at its best when it is most free.”

Linking human flourishing with freedom and self-determination · Political treatise

• Hope
• Truth

“I intend to say of her what has never been said of any woman.”

Expressing an ambition to honour idealised love through unprecedented praise · Prose memoir

• Beauty
• Love
• Poetry

“The purpose of the whole work is to remove those living in this life from a state of misery and to lead them to a state of happiness.”

Presenting literature as a means of moral and spiritual transformation · Epistle to Cangrande della Scala

• Hope
• Truth

“The vernacular is the language which we learn without any rule, by imitating our nurses.”

Defending the dignity and natural origins of everyday speech · Treatise on language

• Language
• Poetry

“In that part of the book of my memory before which there is little to read, there is a heading which says: Here begins a new life.”

A memorable threshold between remembered experience and a transformed life · Prose memoir

• Memory
• Time

“I shall not be a Negro poet. I shall be a poet.”

Expressing his insistence that his poetic identity should not be confined by racial categorisation · Letter, as commonly attributed

• Art
• Truth

“It was written at the request of my children, and for their amusement, on Christmas Eve, 1822.”

A modest account of the poem’s origin as a family Christmas entertainment · Preface to Poems (1844)

• Childhood
• Family
• Joy

“If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be faithful to anything.”

A defence of personal integrity and selfhood · Prose remark, commonly attributed to Claude McKay

• Beauty
• Truth

“O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.”

Presenting beauty through an expansive image of the night sky · Doctor Faustus, spoken by Faustus

• Beauty
• Nature