As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

It was before Deity embodied in a human form walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue, and the doubts of the academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the lictor, and the swords of thirty legions were humbled in the dust.

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.