"I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth."
"The fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature; my whole soul burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centers in it."
- Letter to his father
"The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. "
"The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone. "
