A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.

If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much

The dignity of art probably appears most eminently with music since it does not have any material that needs to be discounted. Music is all form and content and elevates and ennobles everything that it expresses.

Wishes are premonitions of abilities.

Were not the eye made to receive the rays of the sun, it could not behold the sun; if the peculiar power of God lay not in us, how could the godlike charm us?

The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites.

Napoleon for the sake of a good name broke in pieces half the world.