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A work, however, should be judged by its design and its execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the critic, rather than the author.
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To bend and prostrate oneself to express sentiments of respect, appears to be a natural motion.
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An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age
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After the golden age of Latinity, we gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into the iron.
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Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention.
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If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.
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Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize.
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The negroes are lovers of ludicrous actions, and hence all their ceremonies seem farcical.