 All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. |
| With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion. |
| Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality. |
| There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man. |
| To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness. |
| If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered. |
| The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led. |
| They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. |
| I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror. |
| I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty. |
| It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream. |
| A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this - that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made - not to understand - but to feel - as crime. |
| That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. |
| There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few. |
| Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so. |
| It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. |
| The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? |
| Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.' |
| I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. |
| There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm. |
