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

He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.

Friends should be weighed, not told; who boasts to have won a multitude of friends has never had one.

The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it - low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion - and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.

Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.

The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.