The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing --to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party.

Do not all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: we know her woof, her texture; she is given in the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, conquer all mysteries by rule and line, empty the haunted air, and gnome mine unweave a rainbow.

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.

There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate.

Health is my expected heaven.

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.