The conscience is the most flexible material in the world. Today you cannot stretch it over a mole hill; while tomorrow it can hide a mountain.

Every man loves and admires his own country because it produced him.

Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.

When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are.

People who are very vain are usually equally susceptible; and they who feel one thing acutely, will so feel another.

Art does not imitate nature, but founds itself on the study of nature, takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz: The mind and soul of man.

Two lives that once part are as ships that divide.