A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

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.

The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract. Whenever the mind of a writer is saturated with the full inspiration of a great author, a quotation gives completeness to the whole; it seals his feelings with undisputed authority.

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

There is an art of reading, an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

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

Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on the side of genius. When education ends, genius often begins.