You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it - low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion - and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.

Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

On the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, consisted in reality of three dramas, called together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in the course of one day.

Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.

It is a gentle and affectionate thought, that in immeasurable height above us, at our first birth, the wreath of love was woven with sparkling stars for flowers.

For I often please myself with the fancy, now that I may have saved from oblivion the only striking passage in a whole volume, and now that I may have attracted notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten.