With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not — they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.
Bio: Robert Gilbert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart known as Sir Robert Vansittart between 1929 and 1941, was a senior British diplomat in the period before and during the Second World War.