We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.

A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others

My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.

Willing is not enough, we must do.

The poet should seize the Particular, and he should, if there be anything sound in it, thus represent the Universal.

He loves not who does not see the faults of the beloved as virtues.

Thou art in the end what thou art. Put on wigs with millions of curls, set thy foot upon ell-high rocks. Thou abidest ever--what thou art.