Great Throughts Treasury

"Would you who judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure, take this rule; whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in short; whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that is sin to you; however innocent it may be in itself."

"Write poetry for its own sake ? not in a spirit of emulation, and not with a view to celebrity; the less you aim at that the more likely you will be to deserve and finally to obtain it."

"Ye who dwell at home, Ye do not know the terrors of the main."

"Yet leaving here a name, I trust, that will not perish in the dust."

"You once remarked to me how time strengthened family affections, and, indeed, all early ones: one?s feelings seem to be weary of travelling, and like to rest at home. They who tell me that men grow hard-hearted as they grow older have a very limited view of this world of ours. It is true with those whose views and hopes are merely and vulgarly worldly; but when human nature is not perverted, time strengthens our kindly feelings, and abates our angry ones."