Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey Quotes | Quotes of famous people

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Famous Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey Quotes

“He will always see the most beauty whose affections are the warmest and most exercised, whose imagination is the most powerful, and who has most accustomed himself to attend to the objects by which he is surrounded.”

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

Review of Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, in the Edinburgh Review (May 1811)

“Poetry has this much, at least, in common with religion, that its standards were fixed long ago, by certain inspired writers, whose authority it is no longer lawful to call in question; and that many profess to be entirely devoted to it, who have no good works to produce in support of their pretensions. The catholic poetical church, too, has worked but few miracles since the first ages of its establishment; and has been more prolific, for a long time, of doctors than of saints: It has had its corruptions, and reformation also, and has given birth to an infinite variety of heresies and errors, the followers of which have hated and persecuted each other as cordially as other bigots.”

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

Review of Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer, in the Edinburgh Review (October 1802)

“Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better one myself.”

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

Sydney Smith, in a letter to Jeffrey, claimed this as his own parody of him: "If you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the Moon and the Solar System;— 'Damn the solar system! bad light—planets too distant—pestered with comets—feeble contriviance;—could make a better with great ease.'" (The Review of English Studies New Series, vol. 44, pp. 430-432).
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