Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.

All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

Now the basest thought possible concerning man is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual,--coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other.

He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.