A ruin should always be protected but never repaired - thus may we witness full the lingering legacies of the past.

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

Real valor consists not in being insensible to danger; but in being prompt to confront and disarm it.

But woe awaits a country when She sees the tears of bearded men.

Independently of the curious circumstance that such tales should be found existing in very different countries and languages, which augurs a greater poverty of human invention than we would have expected, there is also a sort of wild fairy interest in them, which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the good-boy stories which have been in later years composed for them.

Literature is a great staff, but a very sorry crutch.

Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.