I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.

The highest wisdom and the highest genius have been invariably accompanied with cheerfulness. We have sufficient proofs on record that Shakespeare and Socrates were the most festive companions.

Not drunk is he who from the floor - Can rise alone and still drink more; But drunk is They, who prostrate lies, Without the power to drink or rise.

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longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual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.

I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.

Clouds on clouds, in volumes driven, curtain round the vault of heaven.

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.