Things refuse to be mismanaged for long.

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according to the laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all.

Go out of the house to see the moon, and't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.

Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no can't in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion, the raw material of possible poems and histories.

But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.