Much of this world's wisdom is still acquired by necromancy,--by consulting the oracular dead.

The poet sees things as they look. Is this having a faculty the less? or a sense the more?

Some minds are made of blotting-paper: you can write nothing on them distinctly. They swallow the ink, and you find a large spot.

Few minds are sunlike, sources of light in themselves and to others: many more are moons that shine with a borrowed radiance. One may easily distinguish the two: the former are always full; the latter only now and then, when their suns are shining full upon them.

Moral prejudices are the stopgaps of virtue; and, as is the case with other stopgaps, it is often more difficult to get either out or in through them than through any other part of the fence.

Who is fit to govern others? He who governs himself. You might as well have said: nobody.

Mythology is not religion. It may rather be regarded as the ancient substitute, the poetical counterpart, for dogmatic theology.