Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age.

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonize.

Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, enthusiasm is the true part of genius.

Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive family of genius.

Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius.