In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.
The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
The generous Critic fann’d the Poet’s fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.
There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. “Death,” I said, “any death but that of the pit!” Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man...
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.
He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character.
Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.
The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception.
And I fell violently on my face.
No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path.
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders.
Men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is to possess all the genius by which the work was produced.
A poem in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth.
In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.