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

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

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

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

Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive family of genius.

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.

Every work of Genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the events of times.