Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual.

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

What a difference it makes to come home to a child!

Amid all your duties, keep some hours to yourself.

Artists are always young.

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.

I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.