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

One may quote till one compiles.

The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.

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.

Literary friendship is a sympathy not of manners, but of feelings.

The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves - the creature of habits and infirmities.

The greater part of our writers have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them: and those who never quote in return are seldom quoted.