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

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.

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

To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph-mere stops.

It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.

Artists are always young.

Spirits that have once been sincerely united and tended together a sacred flame, never become entirely stranger to one another's life.