Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.

Who has begun has half done. Have the courage to be wise. Begin!

Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.

I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel - a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.

I have known men of valor cowards to their wives.