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What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth.

Literature can allow us to experience the best side of humankind, where instead of giving up, we struggle desperately in the ruins for love, connection and hope.

As I have encountered difficult moments in my own life, I have been privileged to learn from the great men I have come to know as a writer.

For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.

The sum of the whole is plainly this: The nature of man considered in his single capacity, and with respect only to the present world, is adapted and leads him to attain the greatest happiness he can for himself in the present world.

The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

Every man hath a general desire of his own happiness; and likewise a variety of particular affections, passions, and appetites to particular external objects.