Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.

Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine.

Democracy is a very admirable form of government - for dogs

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

By late accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpected--so entirely novel--so utterly at variance with preconceived opinions--as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears.

A million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on. (Montresor)

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.