Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason.

A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.

A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.