Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the children of the light.

Listen! you hear the grating roar

I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world .

Philistinism!—We have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing.

[Edmund] Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought.

The notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essential provider of elements without which a nation’s spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into an Englishman’s thoughts.

He [the translator] will find one English book and one only, where, as in the Iliad itself, perfect plainness of speech is allied with perfect nobleness; and that book is the Bible.

The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject .

Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself.

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.