[The daguerreotype] itself must undoubtedly be regarded as the most important, and perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science.

The Bostonians are really, as a race, far inferior in point of anything beyond mere intellect to any other set upon the continent of North America. They are decidedly the most servile imitators of the English it is possible to conceive.

A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.

I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.