We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love.

False doctrine does not necessarily make a man a heretic, but an evil heart can make any doctrine heretical.

What is one man's gain is another's loss.

The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty.

I love being superior to myself better than [to] my equals.

Centres, or centre-pieces of wood, are put by builders under an arch of stone while it is in the process of construction till the keystone is put in. Just such is the use Satan makes of pleasures to construct evil habits upon; the pleasure lasts till the habit is fully formed; but that done the habit may stand eternal. The pleasures are sent for firewood, and the hell begins in this life.

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.