All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

there is no planet, sun, or star could hold you if you but knew what you are.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef which is the basis of the continent.

In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.