Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.
Fancy, an animal faculty, is very different from imagination, which is intellectual. The former is passive; but the latter is active and creative. Children, the weak minded, and the timid are full of fancy. Men and women of intellect, of great intellect, are alone possessed of great imagination.
Avoid singularity. There may often be less vanity in following the new modes than in adhering to the old ones. It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting, them.
I would fain coin wisdom,—mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted. Would that I could denounce and banish from the language of men—as base money—the words by which they cheat and are cheated!
Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable.
If authorities were well organized, there would not be an Unknown Warrior.
Order is to arrangement what the soul is to the body, and what mind is to matter.
A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition.
It may be said that it is with our thoughts as with our flowers. Those whose expression is simple carry their seed with them; those that are double by their richness and pomp charm the mind, but produce nothing.
He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.
Young authors give their brains much exercise and little food.
How many books there are whose reputation is made that would not obtain it were it now to make?
When credulity comes from the heart it does no harm to the intellect.
Genuine bon mots surprise those from whose lips they fall, no less than they do those who listen to them.
Grace imitates modesty, as politeness imitates kindness.
In the interchange of thought use no coin but gold and silver.
Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence.
There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.
Tenderness is the rest of passion.
To be an agreeable guest one need only enjoy oneself.
The talkative man speaks from his mouth, the eloquent man speaks from his heart.
Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.
To the liberal ideas of the age must be opposed the moral ideas of all ages.
We disjoint the mind like the body.
There are people who are virtuous only in a piece-meal way; virtue is a fabric from which they never make themselves a whole garment.
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