Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it.

Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.

The morning pouring everywhere, its golden glory on the air.

The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark

The counterfeit and counterpart of Nature is reproduced in art.

Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose.

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.