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The sense of liberty and power, and of belief in the capacity and destiny of man, which was quickened by the new discoveries, distinguishes the literature of the Elizabethan age from the great backward-looking periods of romance. It is a literature of youth and hope, with none of the subtle and poignant flavours that are to be tasted in a literature of regret and memory.

— Walter Raleigh

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More quotes by Walter Raleigh

The Dictionary, great work though it be, might have been successfully carried through by a merely mechanical genius.

Six Essays on Johnson (1910)

These Lives are the maturest and strongest of Johnson's work. It ought be a comfort to men past middle life to find Johnson, like Dryden, wrote his best prose in his latest years.

Six Essays on Johnson (1910)

Definition and division are the watchwords of science, where art is all for composition and creation.

Style (1897)

The measure of an author's power would be best found in the book which he should sit down to write the day after his library was burnt to the ground.

Six Essays on Johnson (1910)

The late Mr. Froude, with a poet's instinct for unity, chose to regard the whole story of the English Voyages as an aspect of the Protestant Reformation.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walter Raleigh (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.