Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

Sympathy constitutes friendship but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.

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

How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.

Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is, prose = words in their best order - poetry = the best words in the best order.