He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.

Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity.

For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.

A babe is fed with milk and praise.

We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies.

The only true time which a man can properly call his own, is that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his.

Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity.