“The forms [of poetry] are subsets of the principles that govern the cosmos itself which, by its very definition is: a complete, orderly, harmonious system.”

The Cosmos as a Poem (2010)

Attributed in The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom (2011) edited by Diana Doroftei and Matthew Cross.

January 26, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)
Context: Poetry — No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

Source: Living systems, 1978, p. 41

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 72

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 94.

in his letter, 15 February 1889, (L. 911); as cited in Steven Z. Levine, ‎Claude Monet (1994), Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self. p. 93
1870 - 1890

John Burgess (1933). The Foundations of Political Science. (reprinted 1994) As cited in Ido Oren, "The Subjectivity of the 'Democratic' Peace," International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2.

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)