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.
Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.
Great old books of the great old authors are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get his own belief.
Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by whom light as well as immortality was brought into the world) which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart--which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions.
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.
The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.
Nature is a wary wily long-breathed old Witch, tough-lived as a Turtle and divisible as the Polyp, repullulative in a thousand Snips and Cuttings, integra et in toto! She is sure to get the better of Lady MIND in the long run, and to take her revenge too transforms our To Day into a Canvass dead-colored to receive the dull featureless Portait of Yesterday.
The Language of the Dream/Night is contrary to that of Waking/Day. It is a language of Images and Sensations, the various dialects of which are far less different from each other, than the various Day-Languages of Nations.
It is the duty of the Judge in criminal trials to take care that the verdict of the jury is not founded upon any evidence except that which the law allows.
God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, you piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Remorse is as the heart in which it grows; If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy, It is the poison tree, that pierced to the inmost, Weeps only tears of poison.
We ought not to extract pernicious honey from poison blossoms of misrepresentation and mendacious half-truth, to pamper the course appetite of bigotry and self-love.
A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief, In word, or sigh, or tear.