There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.
In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.
Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.
The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.
Stupidity is a talent for misconception.
If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.
The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.