"For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are."

"I am not about to write a romance, but a serious history."

"He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things."

"He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king."

"And in the lowest deep a lower deep still threatening to devour me opens wide, to which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."