The critic ... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three.

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

If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English Opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it.

Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it.

You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.

The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open.

I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening.