~Sentiment.~--Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide,
civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher
of sentiment?--_Emerson._
~Separation.~--Indifferent souls never part. Impassioned souls part, and
return to one another, because they can do no better.--_Madame
Swetchine._
~Shakespeare.~--There is only one writer in whom I find something that
reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is
Shakespeare.--_Heinrich Heine._
Far from fearing, as an inferior artist would have done, the
juxtaposition of the familiar and the divine, the wildest and most
fantastic comedy with the loftiest and gravest tragedy, Shakespeare not
only made such apparently discordant elements mutually heighten and
complete the general effect which he contemplated, but in so doing
teaches us that, in human life, the sublime and ridiculous are always
side by side, and that the source of laughter is placed close by the
fountain of tears.--_T. B. Shaw._
Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the
heart of man may be found in his plays.--_Goethe._
In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is
all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark
atmosphere.--_Coleridge._