The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.

Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.

Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.

Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the groundwork of virtue.