When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty.

My companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation, until all is said that words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious assumption.

I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.

If the gatherer gathers too-much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates, monopolies and exceptions.

As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.

Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions.