The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.

A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. They create what is called an ideal character, in an ideal form, whose perfections compensate in some degree for the imperfections of their own.

Talent is full of thoughts, Genius is thought. Talent is a cistern, Genius a fountain.

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.

Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the space which separates the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.

The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged.

The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.