"They say the test of this [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say “Can he name a kitten?” And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot."

"A man's style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible."

"A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted."

"Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides."

"Every new idea has something of the pain and peril of childbirth about it; ideas are just as mortal and just as immortal as organised beings are."