Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from morality, but from envy.

The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love.

Was genius ever ungrateful? Mere talents are dry leaves, tossed up and down by gusts of passion, and scattered and swept away; but, Genius lies on the bosom of Memory, and Gratitude at her feet.

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.

Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel man; it is his love.

Fancy is imagination in her youth and adolescence. Fancy is always excursive; imagination, not seldom, is sedate.

Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.