In some exquisite critical hints on "Eurythmy," Goethe remarks, "that the best composition in pictures is that which, observing the most delicate laws of harmony, so arranges the objects that they by their position tell their own story." And the rule thus applied to composition in painting applies no less to composition in literature.

Life is short - while we speak it flies; enjoy, then, the present, and forget the future; such is the moral of ancient poetry, a graceful and a wise moral - indulged beneath a southern sky, and all deserving, the phrase applied to it - the philosophy of the garden.

There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.

A woman is seldom merciful to the man who is timid.

Poets alone are sure of immortality; they are the truest diviners of nature.

The Almighty proves his existence by creating.

Man hazards the condition and loses the virtues of a freeman, in proportion as he accustoms his thoughts to view without anguish or shame, his lapse into the bondage of debtor.