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

The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state.

We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative.

When the great Kepler bad at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed: "Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is a matter that concerns them more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God Himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.

The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.

Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.