The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold

A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject; and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head.

Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.

In daily life what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well.

An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.

We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society; only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only this dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man.