Thomas Gordon Hake

A poem, of whatever length, should start vividly, so as to wind up the ear and set the mind ticking.

I thought no one ever could paint a woman's eyes like Rossetti. There was a softness, a delicacy, a life, a soul in them, never seen elsewhere, but in living beings, and that how rarely!

The more a writer deviates from simplicity, the less sincere he appears.

It is my purpose in writing these Memoirs to adhere rigidly to truth, at least in its essence. Should I succeed in this, my work would be a very remarkable one, almost unique.

I remember well the time when no gentleman was supposed to smoke; the habit was fit only for the vulgarian.

It may be boasted that free-trade in physic came before free-trade in corn, and from that time medical science began to flourish in this country.

Dr. Thomas Young, the illustrious inventor of the Undulatory Theory of Light, was then a physician at St. George's. I used to go round the wards with him. He was thought to be very undecided in his opinions of a case; the fact is, medicine …

... Mr. Nussey, the king's apothecary, ... whom I knew very intimately later in life, told me that the king confided to him all his secrets, and the knowledge, if written down, would set all England in a blaze. He was with the royal …

In those days, and long after, an English clergyman dressed like a gentleman; he now wears a black livery, and he looks like a bishop's footman, in mourning, with his master, for some dead archbishop.

Nothing that has been and has died out, will be revived. The skeleton, an osseous Apollo, will remain, and that is all.

There is something very dry in family history, because no one cares for other people's relations.