“Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.”

There is a pleasure in being mad, which none but madmen know.

None are so busy as the fool and the knave.

Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are.

He who would pry behind the scenes oft sees a counterfeit.

Sure there’s contagion in the tears of friends.

All authors to their own defects are blind.

A farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.

Imagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints.

All delays are dangerous in war.

Honor is but an empty bubble.

And write whatever Time shall bring to pass With pens of adamant on plates of brass.

He trudged along unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought.

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join’d the former two.

It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, can rule nothing, but is ruled by prudence.

Tis a good thing to laugh at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.

Riches cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave.

Science is unpoetic only to minds jaundiced with sentiment and romanticism, the great masters of the past boasted all they could of it and found it magical.

Volumes are now written and spoken upon the effect of the mind upon the body. Much of it is true. But I wish a little more was thought of the effect of the body on the mind.

I’ve always had to prove myself to people growing up. I had to show them that I could do this and I could do that and paying no mind to what the critics said.

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.

Illness sets the mind free sometimes to roam and surmise.

Is there a chance? A fragment of light at the end of the tunnel? A reason to fight? Is there a chance you may change your mind? Or are we ashes and wine?

Are you really angry, or simply aware of anger in the body and mind? Don’t speculate, simply look at what is there.

Be sure not to discuss your hero’s state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.