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.

We must follow the old authorities and precedents in criminal matters.

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.

A savage place! As holy and enchanted/As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted/By woman wailing for her Demon Lover!

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings.

Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.