That bad letters of every kind arise from want of the habit of thinking, I cannot doubt.

[On Elizabeth Barrett Browning:] Her sweetness of character is even beyond her genius.

Well, great authors are great people - but I believe that they are best seen at a distance.

I detest so much ... those persons, who insist upon telling you everything - who labor every point, as the lawyers say, as if they thought all excellence consisted in length.

The power of admiring whatever is deserving of admiration, the nice and quick perception of the beautiful and the true, is one of the highest and noblest of our faculties, born of taste, and knowledge, and wisdom, or rather it is taste, and wisdom, and knowledge, in one rare and great combination.

Does it not appear to you versatility is the true and rare characteristic of that rare thing called genius-versatility and playfulness? In my mind they are both essential.

Fashion is a capricious deity.