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There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

It does at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite than a farmer who in conducting his team. - Isaac D'Israeli,

Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners.

A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumnity, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principal has taken full effect on this state favorite.

The act of contemplation then creates the thing created.

The most noble criticism is that in which the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

The Self-Educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.

The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.

Happy the man when he has not the defects of his qualities.

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius.

Every work of Genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the events of times.

The great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire.

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.

The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves--the creature of habits and infirmities.

Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public.

But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses.