Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.
From Samuel Taylor Coleridge
People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.
Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from.
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.
No one does anything from a single motive.
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life.
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
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