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.

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longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual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

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

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.

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

There are two reasons for drinking wine...when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it... prevention is better than cure.