If the aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles, and not with truckmen, he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not to be feared.

Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.

Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk but after the counsel of his own bosom.

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

Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore

The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius.