Not one man, in the million, shall I say? no, not in the hundred million, can rise above the belief that woman was made for man.

Every fact is impure, but every fact contains in it the juices of life. Every fact is a clod, from which may grow an amaranth or a palm.

The soul of the great musician can only be expressed in music.

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.

Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking.

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.

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