Some persons have contended that mathematics ought to be taught by making the illustrations obvious to the senses. Nothing can be more absurd or injurious: it ought to be our never-ceasing effort to make people think, not feel.
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people.
Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight.
How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an autumnal day!
Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was white as leprosy, The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
Alone, Alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never saint took pity on My soul in agony.
A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief, In word, or sigh, or tear.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, Yet she sailed softly too: Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze – On me alone it blew.
The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.
That agony returns; And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.
There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch.
The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space.
No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.
I look’d to Heav’n, and try’d to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came and made My heart as dry as dust.
Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.
If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.
Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils.
Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.
And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.