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

After long drought when rains abundant fall, He hears the herbs and flowers rejoicing all.

Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down His life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected Him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense?

Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in

There is a pleasure in poetic pains / Which only poets know.

He that has seen both sides of fifty has lived to little purpose if he has no other views of the world than he had when he was much younger.

The Spirit breathes upon the Word and brings the truth to sight.

An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.

If my resolution to be a great man was half so strong as it is to despise the shame of being a little one.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything.

What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.

Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame; He hides behind a magisterial air He own offences, and strips others’ bare.

Pride made the devil, and the devil made sin; So God made a cole-pit to put the devil in.

God made bees, and bees made honey, God made man, and man made money,

Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.

But still remember, if you mean to please, To press your point with modesty and ease.

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

The traditional face of Africa includes an attitude towards man which can only be described as being socialist

I doubt whether I ever read any description of scenery which gave me an idea of the place described.

You’re trying to take something that can be described in many, many sentences and pages of prose, but you can convert it into a couple lines of poetry and you still get the essence, so it’s that compression. The best code is poetry.

But once you describe something, you destroy it.

Science is not a body of knowledge or a belief system, it is just a term that describes humankind’s incremental acquisition of understanding through observation.

I do not believe that I’m sacrificing, in fact I feel very uneasy when others used the word sacrifice to describe my life. It sounds like I’m demanding returns for my investments.

It is just a term which describes humankind’s incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome.

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.