Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.

I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it - between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power.

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.

The more a man writes, the more he can write.

We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.

One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.