Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases, which he does not choose to acknowledge openly with his own sign manual.

The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed.

Nature never deserts the wise and pure; no plot so narrow, be but nature there; no waste so vacant, but may well employ each faculty of sense, and keep the heart awake to love and beauty.

The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

The devil is not, indeed, perfectly humorous, but that is only because he is the extreme of all humor.

I look'd to Heav'n, and try'd to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came and made My heart as dry as dust.

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)