But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand.

Belief and love,--a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe.

We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

It happens to us once or twice in a lifetime to be drunk with some book which probably has some extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us and none other; and having exhausted that cup of enchantment we go groping in libraries all our years afterwards in the hope of being in Paradise again.

Every man's Reason is sufficient for his guidance, if used.

Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the Shakspeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour.