Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.
After the golden age of Latinity, we gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into the iron.
Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonize.
Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause.
Bayle, when writing on "Comets," discovered this; for having collected many things applicable to his work, as they stood quoted in some modern writers, when he came to compare them with their originals, he was surprised to find that they were nothing for his purpose! the originals conveyed a quite contrary sense to that of the pretended quoters, who often, from innocent blundering, and sometimes from purposed deception, had falsified their quotations. This is an useful story for second-hand authorities!
If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.
Candour is the brightest gem of criticism.
To bend and prostrate oneself to express sentiments of respect, appears to be a natural motion.
Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, enthusiasm is the true part of genius.
A work, however, should be judged by its design and its execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the critic, rather than the author.
The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.
The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle contest.
The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature.
A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.
To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius-the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.
Golden volumes! richest treasures, Objects of delicious pleasures! You my eyes rejoicing please, You my hand in rapture seize! Brilliant wits and musing sages, Lights who beam'd through many ages! Left to your conscious leaves their story, And dared to trust you with their glory; And now their hope of fame achiev'd, Dear volumes! you have not deceived!
The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves - the creature of habits and infirmities.
The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract.
Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius.
After all, it is style alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style.
The Self-Educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.
There is such a thing as literary fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats.
Every work of Genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the events of times.
Centuries have not worm-eaten the solidity of this ancient furniture of the mind.
A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the wit of other men; he searches where knowledge is to be found; and though he may not himself excel in invention, his ingenuity may compose one of those agreeable books, the deliciæ of literature, that will out-last the fading meteors of his day.
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