Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.
Some of our philosophizing divines have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that by their force mankind has been able to find out God.
Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;Jonson was theVirgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today: Be fair or foul or rain or shine, The joys I have possessed in spite of fate are mine. Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
