Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.

In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost.

If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.

I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy.

By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.

We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused - in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery - by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press - their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.

Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.