Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

More from Lectures on the English Poets (1818)

• All that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it.
• The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of time.
• Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
• Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
• Grace has been defined the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
• Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity.