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.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are one, Security to possessors; two, facility to acquirers; and three, hope to all.
Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.
Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.
A man's desire is for the woman, but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.
Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.
A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.
As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life.
No one does anything from a single motive.
All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from.
Good and bad men are less than they seem.
Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.
A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.
Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor.
No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
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.
The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist.
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
Poetry: the best words in the best order.
General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree are to its leaves.
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.
Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.
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.
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.
Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.
Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.
The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.
The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.
Talk of the devil, and his horns appear.
To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed.
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.
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.
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.
And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake - Aye, what then?
He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
