Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but they enchant.

A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural felicity and an acquired difficulty.

How many books there are whose reputation is made that would not obtain it were it now to make?

A temperate style is alone classical.

Grief - Happiness is to feel that one's soul is good; there is no other, in truth, and this kind of happiness may exist even in sorrow, so that there are griefs perfable to every joy, and such as would be preferred by all those who have felt them.

The mind is the atmosphere of the soul.

Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers.