After all, what is a lovely phrase? One that has mopped up as much Truth as it can hold.

The comparison between Coleridge and Johnson is obvious in so far as each held sway chiefly by the power of his tongue. The difference between their methods is so marked that it is tempting, but also unnecessary, to judge one to be inferior to the other. Johnson was robust, combative, and concrete; Coleridge was the opposite. The contrast was perhaps in his mind when he said of Johnson: "his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced.

Oh, I am in love with life!

I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement.

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Dance music ... stirs some barbaric instinct - lulled asleep in our sober lives - you forget centuries of civilization in a second, & yield to that strange passion which sends you madly whirling round the room.

Life without illusion is a ghostly affair.