He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day will often bring to his task attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.

The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.

The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside

I do not care to speak ill of a man behind his back, but I believe he is an attorney.

The imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens... The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform.

Example is always more efficacious than precept.