For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

A great man will find a great subject, or which is the same thing, make any subject great.

We all wish to be of importance in one way or another. The child coughs with might and main, since it has no other claim on the company.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants.

If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterwards.