Were I so tall as to reach the pole or grasp the ocean at a span, I must be measured by my soul. The mind is the standard of the man.

Or ever the knightly years were gone, with the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon and you were a Christian Slave. I saw, I took, I cast you by, I bent and broke your pride... And a myriad suns have set and shone, since then upon the grave, Decreed by the King in Babylon, to her that had been his slave. The pride I trampled is now my scathe, for it tramples me again. The old remnant lasts like death for you love, yet you refrain. I break my heart on your hard unfaith, and I break my heart in vain.

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

Were I so tall as to reach the pole or grasp the ocean at a span, I must be measured by my soul. The mind is the standard of the man.

Into the winter's gray delight, Into the summer's golden dream, Holy and high and impartial, Death, the mother of Life, Mingles all men for ever.

The life of Dumas is not only a monument of endeavour and success, it is a sort of labyrinth as well. It abounds in pseudonyms and disguises, in sudden and unexpected appearances and retreats as unexpected and sudden, in scandals and in rumours, in mysteries and traps and ambuscades of every kind.

Men there have been who have done the essayist's part so well as to have earned an immortality in the doing; but we have had not many of them, and they make but a poor figure on our shelves. It is a pity that things should be thus with us, for a good essayist is the pleasantest companion imaginable.