If eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): The Rhodora.

All is concentr'd in a life intense,

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,

But hath a part of being.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iii. Stanza 89.

For who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being,

Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost

In the wide womb of uncreated night?

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 146.

A Moment's Halt—a momentary taste

Of Being from the Well amid the Waste—

And, Lo! the phantom Caravan has reach'd

The Nothing it set out from. Oh, make haste!

Omar Khayyam (1048-1131): Rubáiyát. Stanza xlviii.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Stanza 22.

A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded,

A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto xv. Stanza 43.

Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,

And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,

Possessing all things with intensest love,

O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): France. An Ode. v.