Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry.

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.... He who works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.

Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling

Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.

Culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.

And we forget because we must and not because we will.

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.