The poet craves emotion, and feeds the fire that consumes him, and only under this condition is he baptized with creative power.

To realize life in the abstract as noble or beautiful or humane, to set it forth so with radiance upon it, that is civilization in the arts. Shakespeare is the chief modern example of this supreme faculty of mankind.

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

The critic is genius at one remove; he is not unlike an actor on the stage, and incarnates in his mind, as the actor embodies in his person, another's work; only thus does he understand art, realize it, know it; and having arrived at this, his task is done.

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

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.

It is not meant that the artist, in arriving at truth, must follow the way of the scientist, or, in stating it, the way of the philosopher.