Creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and with such co-presence of the whole picture flash'd at once upon the eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. (Describing his poetic ideal, 1817)

The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space.

History has a point of view; it cannot be all things to all people.

A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it.

Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises.

General principles... are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves.

We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the greeks received from it had for its basis difference; & the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively was the curiosity & intense the delights at seeing the difficulty overcome.