Mistake not.  Those pleasures are not pleasures that trouble the quiet and tranquillity of thy life.—­Jeremy Taylor.

Poetry.—­True poetry, like the religious prompting itself, springs from the emotional side of a man’s complex nature, and is ever in harmony with his highest intuitions and aspirations.—­Epes Sargent.

Then, rising with aurora’s light,
The muse invoked, sit down to write;
Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline;
Be mindful, when invention fails,
To scratch your head and bite your nails. 

          
                          —­Swift.

It is uninspired inspiration.—­Henry reed.

Poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.—­Coleridge.

Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares,
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays! 

          
                          —­Wordsworth.

Poetry is the music of thought, conveyed to us in music of language.  —­Chatfield.

He who finds elevated and lofty pleasures in the feeling of poetry is a true poet, though he has never composed a line of verse in his entire lifetime.—­Madame DUDEVANT.

Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire; it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice.—­Mazzini.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.—­Shelley.

Poetry is unfallen speech.  Paradise knew no other, for no other would suffice to answer the need of those ecstatic days of innocence.  —­Abraham Coles.

Poesy is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate.—­Denham.

Poetry is the child of enthusiasm.—­Sigma.

The art of poetry is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue.—­Cowper.

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.—­S.T.  Coleridge.

When the Divine Artist would produce a poem, He plants a germ of it in a human soul, and out of that soul the poem springs and grows as from the rose-tree the rose.—­James A. Garfield.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.—­Macaulay.

Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.—­Voltaire.

There is as much difference between good poetry and fine verses, as between the smell of a flower-garden and of a perfumer’s shop.—­Hare.