I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.

The Public is a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify -- so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.

Failure is in a sense the highway to success, as each discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true.

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity --it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

There's a blush for won t, and a blush for shan't, and a blush for having done it: There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught, and a blush for just begun it.