“Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where “I admire” is but a synonyme for “I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it ,” is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!”

And in today already walks tomorrow.

Be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an honorable augmentations to your arms, not constitute the coat or fill the escutcheon!

I may not hope from outward forms to win / The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that every Thing has a Life of its own, and that we are all one Life.

Those who best know human nature will acknowledge most fully what a strength light hearted nonsense give to a hard working man

Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals.

With all our wisdom and foresight we can take a lesson in gladness and gratitude from the happy bird that sings all night, as if the day were not long enough to tell its joy.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

To be beloved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.

Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.

In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.