A man should carry nature in his head.

Every man has a vocation. The talent is the call.

Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?

There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

Thought makes everything fit for use.

By going one step further back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.

There is some reason to believe that when a man does not write his poetry it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses.