The measure of an author's power would be best found in the book which he should sit down to write the day after his library was burnt to the ground. - Walter Raleigh

God's most candid critics are those of his children whom he has made poets.

The Dictionary, great work though it be, might have been successfully carried through by a merely mechanical genius.

... these men, though there was little of saintliness in their character, had a religion, and fought and suffered for it. It was a religion not wholly unlike that of the later Orangeman, a Protestant compound, made up of fervid patriotism, a varied assortment of hates, a rough code of morals, and an unshaken trust in the providence of God. To the heathen they brought not peace but a sword. To the Pope, whom they named with the Turk and the Devil, they wished destruction. For Queen and Country they would go anywhere and attempt anything.