Quotes from work

A Fable for Critics

“In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak,
If you've once found the way you've achieved the grand stroke.”

“For though he builds glorious temples, 'tis odd
He leaves never a doorway to get in a god.”

“There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.”

“And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak,
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store,
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.”

“A reading-machine, always wound up and going,
He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.”

“Nature fits all her children with something to do,
He who would write and can't write, can surely review.”