The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

There is a society in the deepest solitude.

A learned historian declared to me of a contemporary, that the latter had appropriated his researches; he might, indeed, and he had a right to refer to the same originals; but if his predecessor had opened the sources for him, gratitude is not a silent virtue.

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

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.

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

A circle may be small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a large one.