The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize.

A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.

Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.

Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.

The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.