That best academy, a mother's knee.

In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the later poetry has become science.

Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.

All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion ; and it is on the quality of this public opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life.

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change; Then let it come: I have no dread of what Is called for by the instinct of mankind. Nor think I that God's world would fall apart Because we tear a parchment more or less. Truth is eternal, but her effluence, With endless change, is fitted to the hour; Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past. I do not fear to follow out the truth.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.

A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity