The critic's first labor is the task of distinguishing between men, as history and their works display them, and the ideals which one and another have conspired to urge upon his acceptance.

Progress comes by experiment, and this from ennui that leads to voyages, wars, revolutions, and plainly to change in the arts of expression; that cries out to the imagination, and is the nurse of the invention whereof we term necessity the mother.

Natural emotion is the soul of poetry, as melody is of music; the same faults are engendered by over-study of either art; there is a lack of sincerity, of irresistible impulse in both the poet and the, composer.

Yes, there's a luck in most things; and in none more than being born at the right time.

Fashion is a potency in art, making it hard to judge between the temporary and the lasting.

The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.

Genius does not need a special language; it uses newly whatever tongue it finds.