It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.

Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labor employed in it, or the mental pleasure in producing it.

Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe.

Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.

In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature.

Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.