"The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries ..." — William E. Gladstone

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

It is not a life at all. It is a reticence, in three volumes.

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

No one ever became great except through many and great mistakes.