Praises of the unworthy are felt by ardent minds as robberies of the deserving.
As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.
Bells, the poor man’s only music.
Novels are to love as fairy tales to dreams.
The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers.
Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks.
Indignation at literary wrongs I leave to men born under happier stars. I cannot afford it.
Little is taught by contest or dispute, everything by sympathy and love.
Until my ghastly tale is told, this heart within me burns.
Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright enemy.
Why look’st thou so?‘ – With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS.
When a man is unhappy he writes damned bad poetry, I find.
A great poet must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent desert, the eye of a North American Indian tracing the footsteps of an enemy upon the leaves that strew the forest, the touch of a blind man feeling the face of a darling child.
But I do not doubt that it is beneficial sometimes to contemplate in the mind, as in a picture, the image of a grander and better world; for if the mind grows used to the trivia of daily life, it may dwindle too much and decline altogether into worthless thoughts.
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all. The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest Turned from the bridegroom’s door.
It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to distinguish; but it is a still worse that distinguishes in order to divide.
By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
A new Earth and new Heaven.
Every other science presupposes intelligence as already existing and complete: the philosopher contemplates it in its growth, and as it were represents its history to the mind from its birth to its maturity.
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely ’twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be.