Good religious poetry... is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.

Ten thousand times I've done my best and all's to do again.

Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.

Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.