A friend's only gift is himself.

Sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another, makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solicitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty?

A way foolishness has of revenging itself is to excommunicate the world.

Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.

The arts must study their occasions; they must stand modestly aside until they can slip in fitly into the interstices of life.