Date: January, 1833

"Considered as poetry, they [ballads] are of the lowest and most elementary kind: the feelings depicted, or rather indicated, are the simplest our nature has; such joys and griefs as the immediate pressure of some outward event excites in rude minds, which live wholly immersed in outward things, ...

— Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873)

Date: January, 1833

"What they know has come by observation of themselves; they have found within them one highly delicate and sensitive specimen of human nature, on which the laws of emotion are written in large characters, such as can be read off without much study."

— Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873)

Date: January, 1833

"[Philosophy] cuts fresh channels for thought, but does not fill up such as it finds ready-made: it traces, on the contrary, more deeply, broadly, and distinctly, those into which the current has spontaneously flowed."

— Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873)

Date: January, 1833

"Descriptive poetry consists, no doubt, in description, but in description of things as they appear, not as they are; and it paints them, not in their bare and natural lineaments, but seen through the medium and arrayed in the colors of the imagination set in action by the feelings."

— Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873)