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.

Poetry is to philosophy what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week.

Just, harmonious, temperate as is the spirit of liberty, there is in the name and mere notion of it a vagueness so opposite to the definite clearness of the moral law.

Friendship is Love with jewels on, but without either flowers or veil.

The mind is like a trunk: if well-packed, it holds almost every thing; if ill-packed, next to nothing.

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

Many men spend their lives in gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.