All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.
And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.
Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.
Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
The fair breeze blew, The white foam flew, And the forrow followed free. We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.
Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.
The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.
Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are one, Security to possessors; two, facility to acquirers; and three, hope to all.
Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed.
The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.
To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.
Good and bad men are less than they seem.
As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale – my dreams become the substances of my life.
Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation.
Enlist the interests of stern Morality and religious Enthusiasm in the cause of Political Liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible.
On the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, consisted in reality of three dramas, called together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in the course of one day.