His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.

It seems that the creative faculty, and the critical faculty, cannot exist together in their highest perfection.

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed have to wait forever.

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.

Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,-there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.

If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterise the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the vast accomplishments, and the brilliant fancy of Cicero; the withering fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dante; the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of Butler; the supreme and universal excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling.