Isaac D'Israeli

"Candour is the brightest gem of criticism."

"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation."

"Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize."

"If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner."

"To bend and prostrate oneself to express sentiments of respect, appears to be a natural motion."

"The negroes are lovers of ludicrous actions, and hence all their ceremonies seem farcical."

"Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation."

"Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe."

"There is such a thing as Literary Fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats."

"Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm."

"A work, however, should be judged by its design and its execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the critic, rather than the author."

"After the golden age of Latinity, we gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into the iron."

"The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle contest."

"Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention."

"An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age"