I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

That accurst autobiographic form which puts a premium on the loose, the improvised, the cheap, and the easy.

Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.

...he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.

In a play, certainly, the subject is of more importance than in any other work of art. Infelicity, triviality, vagueness of subject, may be outweighed in a poem, a novel, or a picture, by charm of manner, by ingenuity of execution; but in a drama the subject is of the essence of the work-it is the work. If it is feeble, the work can have no force; if it is shapeless, the work must be amorphous.

Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance.

We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generosity.