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In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.
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Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.
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Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
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The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.
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It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
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Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.
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No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
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And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
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As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.
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Complete self-devotion is woman's part.
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It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern.
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Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry.
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All the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.
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A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
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Ambrose Phillips . . . who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby Pamby.
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Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.
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The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman.
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In the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.
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Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.
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