What genius had De Quincey! Marvelous the myriad-minded Coleridge! The opium-habit, however, was a vice that eclipsed their fame and robbed them of half their rightful influence.

Voltaire's style was so faultlessly perfect that if the sentences lying across his page had been strings of pearls they could have been no more beautiful.

But Voltaire's excesses make a black mark across the white page before each reader's mind.

Rousseau's writings are so melodious that, long after laying aside the book the ear would be filled with the sound of delicious music were it not that the reader seems ever to hear the moan of the four children whose unnatural father, without even giving them a name, placed them in the foundling-asylum.
Early Carlyle wooed and won one of the most brilliant girls of his day, whose signal talent shone in the crowded drawing-rooms of London like a sapphire blazing among pebbles.

Yet her husband lacked gentleness.
Slowly harshness crept into Carlyle's voice.