In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.

Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.

Sincerity is moral truth.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincerity, not antagonism.

Every one who has seriously investigated a novel question, who has really interrogated Nature with a view to a distinct answer, will bear me out in saying that it requires intense and sustained effort of imagination.

It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public.