Fear gives sudden instincts of skill.

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

I do not wish you to act from these truths; no, still and always act from your feelings; only meditate often on these truths that sometime or other they may become your feelings.

I attended [Sir Humphry] Davy's lectures to renew my stock of metaphors.

To all new truths, or renovation of old truths, it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about-to-be renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive wreath.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

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