I place flowers in the very first rank of simple pleasures; and I have no very good opinion of the hard worldly people who take no delight in them.

[On Elizabeth Barrett Browning:] ... for finish, and melody of versification, there is nothing approaching to Miss Barrett in this day, or in any other - also for diction. Her words paint.

A novel should be as like life as a painting, but not as like life as a piece of waxwork.

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

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.

To think of playing cricket for hard cash! Money and gentility would ruin any pastime under the sun.

Our English people are much addicted to raising idols, and then revenging themselves on their own idolatry by knocking down and demolishing the poor bits of wood and stone that they had worshipped as gods. How many literary reputations have been so treated!