How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world.

It is natural that affluence should be followed by influence.

Many actions, like the Rhone, have two sources,--one pure, the other impure.

We look to our last sickness for repentance, unmindful that it is during a recovery men repent, not during a sickness.

Philosophy cannot raise the commonalty up to her level: so, if she is to become popular, she must sink to theirs.

Most painters have painted themselves. So have most poets: not so palpably indeed, but more assiduously. Some have done nothing else.

If Painting be Poetry's sister, she can only be a sister Anne, who will see nothing but a flock of sheep, while the other bodies forth a troop of dragoons with drawn sabres and white-plumed helmets.