I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.

Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.

We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which we have experienced.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.