Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood.

Rage is essentially vulgar.

There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch.

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

If people could learn history, what lessons it might teach us!

Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an atheist.

Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction.