Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.

When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion.

Sexes. One has the look of a wound, the other of something skinned.

All good verses are like impromptus made at leisure.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.

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