Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste.

The nearer we approach great men, the clearer we see that they are men.

Extremes are vicious, and proceed from men; compensation is just, and proceeds from God.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.

The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food,--they nourish, but at the same time they consume it.

Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.