Only poetry inspires poetry.
See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.
The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.
Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.
Sorrow makes us children again.
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.
The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.
I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
Never read any book that is not a year old.
It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.
Above anything else, I hate to lose.
Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Excessive literary production is a social offense.
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
