6 quotes
Iago's soliloquy—the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful it is!
Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811)
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, etc., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.
Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811)
The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.
Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811)
The poet is not only the man made to solve the riddle of the universe, but he is also the man who feels where it is not solved.
Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811)
But alas! the exceptions prove the rule. For who will dare to force his way out of the crowd,—not of the mere vulgar,—but of the vain and banded aristocracy of intellect, and presume to join the almost supernatural beings that stand by themselves aloof?
Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811)
Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.
Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811)