Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty the power of appreciating beauty.

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.

Most marvelous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked-for beauty, make flowers bloom even on the brow of the precipice, and, when nothing better can be had, can turn the very substance of rock itself into moss and lichens. This faculty is uncomparingly the most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men.

It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with a man. It is pleasant to be sure of it, because it is undoubtedly the same love that we shall feel when we are angels.

The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.

Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.