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.

An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol.

Metaphysics,--the science which determines what can and what cannot be known of being and the laws of being.

As long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny, there will be found reviewers to calumniate.

Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils.

The fastidious taste will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call slang, which not a few of our writers seem to have affected.

Creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and with such co-presence of the whole picture flash'd at once upon the eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. (Describing his poetic ideal, 1817)