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

The effects of human wickedness are written on the page of history in characters of blood: but the impression soon fades away; so more blood must be shed to renew it.

One saves oneself much pain, by taking pains; much trouble, by taking trouble.

Books, as Dryden has aptly termed them, are spectacles to read nature. Aeschylus and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Bacon, are priests who preach and expound the mysteries of man and the universe. They teach us to understand and feel what we see, to decipher and syllable the hieroglyphics of the senses.

There is as much difference between good poetry and fine verses, as between the smell of a flower-garden and of a perfumer's shop.

There are men whom you will never dislodge from an opinion, except by taking possession of it yourself.

The feeling is often the deeper truth, the opinion the more superficial one.