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

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius.

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

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

Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.

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.

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.