Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.

Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.

We are now Courts of equity, and must decide the thing according to all the rights.

To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for years has rendered familiar, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent.

The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers.

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.