The most noble criticism is that in which the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author.

It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.

If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius-the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

Centuries have not worm-eaten the solidity of this ancient furniture of the mind.

The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory.

Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers.