“I have heard of a minister, who had been a fisherman, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a time as he could tell a cod froma haddock. Generous as it seems, this condition would empty most country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since the fishers of men were fishermen.”

“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”

“It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.”

“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.”

“But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.”

“Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.”

“Literature is a comprehensive essence of the intellectual life of a nation.”

“If we tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of refuge.”

“Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.”

“Then others for breath of words respect, Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.”

“Nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will.”

“Wolves and bears, they say, casting their savagery aside, have done like offices of pity.”

“The weary sun hath made a golden setAnd by the bright tract of his fiery carGives token of a goodly day to-morrow.”

“Nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will.”

“The breach of customIs breach of all.”

“Liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum.”

“What is the city but the people?”

“The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.”

“... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.”

“A fly is as untamable as a hyena.”