“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.”

“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.”

“I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.”

“If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.”

“The object of Art is to give life a shape.”

“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.”

“The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.”

“The conservative assumes sickness as a necessity, and his social frame is a hospital, his total legislation is for the present distress, a universe in slippers and flannels, with bib and papspoon, swallowing pills and herb-tea.”

“The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy.”

“I have supped full with horrors.”

“Some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time.”

“To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”

“"Fair, kind, and true" is all my argument,"Fair, kind, and true" varying to other words;And in this change is my invention spent,Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.”

“Shall I compare thee to a summer day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate... When in eternal lines to time thou growst So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

“The truest poetry is the most feigning.”

“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.”