“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”

“Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.”

“The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary have served the cause of truth and virtue.”

“Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.”

“I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at shorter distances, the senses are despotic.”

“Literature is a comprehensive essence of the intellectual life of a nation.”

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminodas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and had given that book immense fame.”

“Sweets grown common lose their dear delight.”

“And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

“The prize of all too precious you.”

“I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.”

“If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.”

“The object of Art is to give life a shape.”

“The house praises the carpenter.”

“If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.”

“Every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol.”

“If we tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of refuge.”

“Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the Shakspeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour.”

“Englands genius filled all measureOf heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,Gave to the mind its emperor,And life was larger than before:Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeares wit. The men who lived with him becamePoets, for the air was fame.”

“Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let Time try.”

“Time, that takes survey of all the world,Must have a stop.”

“The time is out of joint.”