“Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.”

The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.

Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.

Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones you must keep them wet.

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if,when you awoke,you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?

Imagination is the living power and prime agent of all human perception.

For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.

The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise.

As a man without forethought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so forethought without reflection is but a metaphorical phrase for the instinct of a beast.

Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood.

The faults of great authors are generally excellences carried to an excess.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it – low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion – and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national.

My eyes make pictures when they are shut.

Of no agenor of any religion, or party or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind.

I always find it incredibly difficult to figure out whether I should reach for the check or not. I don’t want to presume anything, but I don’t want to be a ball-buster.

In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.

I can not understand why ministers presume to deliver sermons every week at appointed hours because it is humanly impossible for inspirations to come with clock-like regularity

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.

In athletics, the idea of possibility is presumed. It’s not ‘if;’ it’s ‘how.’

People presume my disability has to do with being an amputee, but that’s not the case.

Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. … under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.