The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner.
I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.
We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves.
The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant--without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others--and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings.
None but those who are happy in themselves can make others so.
We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.
The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs.
I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.
Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.
The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.
Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.
An accomplished coquette excites the passions of others, in proportion as she feels none herself.
To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.
The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting; while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.
Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge.
The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE; it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.
Pride goes before a fall, they say, And yet we often find, The folks who throw all pride away Most often fall behind.
Despair swallows up cowardice.
If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.
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