“On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called History, a foam-bell more or less is no consequence.”

The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.

Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.

For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.

The brave, impetuous heart yields everywhere to the subtle, contriving head.

They… who await. No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.

Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men.

Men of culture are the true apostles of equality

The grand stye arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.

I am bound by my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.

It is – last stage of all When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man

This strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims.

Nature’s great law, and the law of all men’s minds? To its own impulse every creature stirs: Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers.

The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.