“A critic is a man created to praise greater men than himself, but he is never able to find them.”

“It is curious how, from time immemorial, man seems to have associated the idea of evil with beauty, shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly fear, while, at the same time drawn to it by force of its h...”

“There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, that gives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousy of goodness and greatness and things of good report.”

“The beauty we love is very silent. It smiles softly to itself, but never speaks.”

“A wholesome oblivion of one's neighbours is the beginning of wisdom.”

“Yea, howso we dream, Or how bravely we do;The end is the same, Be we traitor or true: And after the bloom And the passion is pastDeath comes at last.”