Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.

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

There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise.

God is the only being who has time enough; but a prudent man, who knows how to seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he needs.

Pride and weakness are Siamese twins.

If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.

The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.