Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

I tell myself that God gave my children many gifts - spirit, beauty, intelligence, the capacity to make friends and to inspire respect. There was only one gift he held back - length of life.

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.