Humor is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere.

So will I build my altar in the fields, And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to meter. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

Motives are symptoms of weakness, and supplements for the deficient energy of the living principle, the law within us. Let them then be reserved for those momentous acts and duties in which the strongest and best-balanced natures must feel themselves deficient, and where humility no less than prudence prescribes deliberation.

He saw a lawyer killing a viper on a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind of Cain and his brother Abel.