Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

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

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.

Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.