All pictures that's painted with sense and with thought / Are painted by madmen as sure as a groat; / For the greater the fool in the pencil more blest, / And when they are drunk they always paint best.
What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated [i.e. mortal] body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the eternal realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature.
Angels are happier than men and devils, because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another, and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan's gratification.
If you trap the moment before it's ripe, The tears of repentence you'll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go You can never wipe off the tears of woe.
Innate ideas are in every man, born with him; they are truly himself. The man who says that we have no innate ideas must be a fool and knave, having no conscience or innate science.
The fields from Islington to Marybone, To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood, Were builded over with pillars of gold; And there Jerusalem's pillars stood.
To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes.