It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty on...e can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know of no studies so composing as those of the classical scholar. When we have sat down to them, life seems as still and serene... as if it were very far off, and I believe it is not habitually seen from any common platform so truly and unexaggerated as in the light of literature. In serene hours we contemplate the tour of the Greek and Latin authors with more pleasure than the traveler does the fairest scenery of Greece or Italy. Where shall we find a more refined society? That highway down from Homer and Hesiod to Horace and Juvenal is more attractive than the Appian. Reading the classics or conversing with those old Greeks and Latins in their surviving works, is like walking amid the stars and constellations, a high and by way serene to travel. Indeed, the true scholar will be not a little of an astronomer in his habits. Distracting cares will not be allowed to obstruct his field of vision, for the higher regions of literature, like astronomy, are above storm and darkness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would have ...held up his head in their company.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disgu...ised, or a little mistaken.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Why wouldn't it scare me to have a fire Begin in smudge with ropy smoke, and know... That still, if I repent, I may recall it, But in a moment not: a little spurt Of burning fatness, and then nothing but The fire itself can put it out, and that By burning out...."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little periph...eral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An acquaintance with the muses, in the education of youth, contributes not a little to soften the manners. It gives a delicate tur...n to the imagination, and a kind of polish to the mind in severer studies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »