“The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”

“The two most engaging powers of a good author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”

“I look upon every day to be lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance.”

“I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.”

“If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.”

“And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and Passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in strength and innovation, and the latter in elegance and refinement.”

“Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.”