Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.

A man had rather have a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish should be told.

Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.

If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.

He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted.

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.