Art is the filigrain of a little mind, and is twisted and involved and curled, but would reach farther if laid out in a straight line.

Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.

I am persuaded that foolish writers and foolish readers are created for each other; and that fortune provides readers as she does mates for ugly women.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.

[French] authors are more afraid of offending delicacy and rules, than ambitious of sublimity.

Shakespeare had no tutors but nature and genius. He caught his faults from the bad taste of his contemporaries. In an age still less civilized Shakespeare might have been wilder, but would not have been vulgar.