The youth is better than the old age of friendship.

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

We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.

Natural affection is a prejudice; for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them better than others.

Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

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.