Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius.
The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.
A work, however, should be judged by its design and its execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the critic, rather than the author.
Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, enthusiasm is the true part of genius.
It does not at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting his team.
Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners
The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory.
Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers.
Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause.
An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age.
Style! style! why, all writers will tell you that it is the very thing which can least of all be changed. A man's style is nearly as much a part of him as his physiognomy, his figure, the throbbing of this pulse,--in short, as any part of his being is at least subjected to the action of the will.
Every work of Genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the events of times.
There is such a thing as literary fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats.
The Self-Educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.
If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.
Candour is the brightest gem of criticism.
To bend and prostrate oneself to express sentiments of respect, appears to be a natural motion.
Those who never quote, in return are never quoted.
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