The Office Of Poetry Is Not To

Defeat In Doing Right Is Nevertheless Victory.

That Prayer Which Does Not Succeed In Moderating Our Wishes--in Changing The Passionate Desire Into Still Submission, The Anxious, Tumultuous Expectation Into Silent Surrender--is No True Prayer, And Proves That We Have Not The Spirit Of True Prayer.

The Truest Definition Of Evil Is That Which Represents It As Something Contrary To Nature; Evil Is Evil Because It Is Unnatural; A Vine Which Should Bear Olive-berries, An Eye To Which Blue Seems Yellow, Would Be Diseased; An Unnatural Mother, An Unnatural Son, An Unnatural Act, Are The Strongest Terms Of Condemnation.

False Notions Of Liberty Are Strangely Common. People Talk Of It As If It Meant The Liberty Of Doing Whatever One Likes - Whereas The Only Liberty That A Man, Worthy Of The Name Of Man, Ought To Ask For, Is, To Have All Restrictions, Inward And Outward, Removed That Prevent His Doing What He Ought.

The Man Whom Society Will Not Forgive Nor Restore Is Driven Into Recklessness.