Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius. They fear lest they should be loved for a quality, and not for themselves.

Love sacrifices all things to bless the thing it loves.

He who sees his heir in his own child, carries his eye over hopes and possessions lying far beyond his gravestone, viewing his life, even here, as a period but closed with a comma. He who sees his heir in another man's child sees the full stop at the end of the sentence.

Talk not of genius baffled. Genius is master of man. Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.

The real truthfulness of all works of imagination, sculpture, painting, and written fiction, is so purely in the imagination, that the artist never seeks to represent positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth

Centuries roll, customs change, but, ever since the time of the earliest mother, woman yearns to be the soother.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.