Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.

Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and the sea is not within sight; that in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not possible.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on my face!

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.