"Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare;..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.”

“All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such success that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art.”

“He who has acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it will not loiter.”

“Nor sequent centuries could hitOrbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.”

“Shakespeare said, "Kill all the lawyers." There were no agents then.”

“We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon werage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desdemona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago.”

“Carlyle must undoubtedly plead guilty to the charge of mannerism. He not only has his vein, but his peculiar manner of working it.He has a style which can be imitated, and sometimes is an imitator of himself.”

“In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic.”

“Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.”