He had a splendid appetite at all times, and never toyed with his food

Discriminating brevity is a law of the right biographic method.

Reading is a wrestling with ideas greater than any we can create for ourselves. It has been said, a little extravagantly, that reading can get the better of most physical sufferings, all indeed save the pangs of hunger.

I believe that the luxuriance of Shakespeare's dramatic instinct largely dominates that outburst of lyric melody which gives the Sonnets their life.

Every great national literature is a fruit of much foreign sustenance and refreshment, however capable the national spirit may prove of mastering the foreign element.

a purely literal interpretation of the impassioned protestations of affection for a "lovely boy", which course through the sonnets, casts a slur on the dignity of the poet's name which scarcely bears discussion

Shakespeare's relations with men and women of the court involved him at the outset in emotional conflicts, which form the subject-matter of his 'Sonnets'