Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth.

the distinction between talent and genius is definite. Talent combines and uses; genius combines and creates.

The moment in which the spirit meets death is perhaps like the moment in which it is embraced in sleep. I suppose it never happened to any one to be conscious of the immediate transition from the waking to the sleeping state.

A king or a prince becomes by accident a part of history. A poet or an artist becomes by nature and necessity a part of universal humanity.

Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords-philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.

How often we have had cause to regret that the histrionic art, of all the fine arts the most intense in its immediate effect, should be, of all others, the most transient in its result! - and the only memorials it can leave behind, at best, so imperfect and so unsatisfactory!

The moment one begins to solder right and wrong together, one's conscience becomes like a piece of plated goods.