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

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

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.

A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the wit of other men; he searches where knowledge is to be found; and though he may not himself excel in invention, his ingenuity may compose one of those agreeable books, the deliciæ of literature, that will out-last the fading meteors of his day.

The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.

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

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