No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.

The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses.

Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?

There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony.

It often happens that a man develops a deeper love and friendship with his pet cat or dog than he does with most of the other humans in his life.