The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.
Himself
Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.
No one is free who does not lord over himself.
I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change – within himself, not on the outside.
If the king refuses the constitution, I shall oppose him; if he accepts it, I shall defend him; and the day on which he gave himself up as my prisoner secured me more fully to his service than if he had promised me half his kingdom.
To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.
A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself.
No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.
Progressively saved by the machine from the anxieties that bound his hands and mind to material toil, relieved of a large part of his work and compelled to an ever-increasing speed of action by the devices which his intelligence cannot help ceaselessly creating and perfecting, man is about to find himself abruptly plunged into idleness.
No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.