Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former.

Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight.

General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves.

Her skin was white as leprosy.

The artist must imitate that which is within the thing, that which is active through form and figure, and discourses to us by symbols.

All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.