Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
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.
Alas! they had been friends in youth but whispering tongues can poison truth.
All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist.
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.
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.
Poetry: the best words in the best order.
Swans sing before they die - 'twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.
The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.
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.
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
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.
People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.
No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
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.