A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and loathsome of all brutes.

When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod-or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly-thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.

There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one.