“The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity.”

I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

We are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference.

Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.

In the deepest night of trouble and sorrow God gives us so much to be thankful for that we need never cease our singing.

There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon.

This world has angels all too few, and heaven is overflowing.

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self?

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

Our own heart, and not other men’s opinion, forms our true honor.

Clergymen who publish pious frauds in the interest of the church are the orthodox liars of God.

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.

The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.

Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.

I like to describe my life as a black hole with a little light out there.

[My kitten’s] gambols are not to be described, and would be incredible, if they could.

Hung it on each side with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light.

What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.

Courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions, courage that could be described as ‘grace under pressure’ – grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.

I do not, as you know, take sufficient interest in dress to be able to describe the new fashions. Dress is a bore.