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.

Shakespeare has been praised in English more than anything mortal except poetry itself. Fame exhausts thought in his eulogy.

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.

We foresee no limit to scientific advancement in the future, and in scientific truth there is nothing dead; science is always a living and growing body of knowledge; but art on the contrary has many times run its course to an end, and exhausted its vital power.

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

You must find the ideas that have some promise in them... It is not enough to just have ideas.

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.