Laughter is pleasant, but the exertion at my age is too much for me.

My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book,—it is a plaything.

He kept at true good humor's mark The social flow of pleasure's tide: He never made a brow look dark, Nor caused a tear, but when he died.

... where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have cant; where they had anything that exalts, delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant.

I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.

A book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book, — it is a plaything.

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge.