I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read. - Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.