Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.
Jean de la BruyereWhen a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman.
Jean de la BruyereThe slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortunes.
Jean de la BruyereFalse greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.
Jean de la Bruyere