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.

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.

It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

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.

Few take advice, or physic, without wry faces at it.

I like the smell of a dunged field, and the tumult of a popular election.

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.