It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

Never try to make anyone like you: you know, and God knows, that one of you is enough.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason.

Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.

The soul circumscribes all things.