True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Most long lives resemble those threads of gossamer, the nearest approach to nothing unmeaningly prolonged, scarce visible pathways of some worm from his cradle to his grave.

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.

To genius life never grows commonplace.

Who is it needs such flawless shafts as fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, or hits the white so surely?