There is a society in the deepest solitude..

Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, ….

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 ma….

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius..

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius..

This is one of the results of that adventurous spirit which is now stalking forth and raging for its own innovations. We have not only rejected AUTHO….

Such do not always understand the authors whose names adorn their barren pages, and which are taken, too, from the third or the thirtieth hand. Those….

It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us..

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….

The Plagiarism of orators is the art, or an ingenious and easy mode, which some adroitly employ to change, or disguise, all sorts of speeches of thei….

The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornam….

Style! style! why, all writers will tell you that it is the very thing which can least of all be changed. A man's style is nearly as much a part of h….

But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses..

It does not at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite delight than a farmer who is c….

Happy the man when he has not the defects of his qualities..

The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces..

A great work always leaves us in a state of musing..

Quotations, like much better things, has its abuses..

Candour is the brightest gem of criticism..

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..

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..