“Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.”

“The pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth.”

“And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and Passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in strength and innovation, and the latter in elegance and refinement.”

“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.”

“The true art of memory, is the art of attention”

“The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.”

“Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.”