Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.

Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.

Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.

There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary.

It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.