I am quite sure that no friendship yields its true pleasure and nobility of nature without frequent communication, sympathy and service.

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

I believe that ideal character in its perfection is potentially in every man who is born into the world.

The sense that someone else cares always helps because it is the sense of love.

A nation's poets are its true owners; and by the stroke of the pen they convey the title-deeds of its real possessions to strangers and aliens.

A marvellous power of expression over language often distinguishes genius; but Shakespeare in his phrases seems independent of the bonds of language as of the bonds of metre.

A writer is justly called 'universal' when he is understood within the limits of his civilization, though that be bounded by a country or an age.