I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.

Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events, just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.

There is small chance of truth at the goal, where there is not childlike humility at the starting-post.

Christianity is within a man, even as he is gifted with reason; it is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first remembered, tones of her blessed voice.

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