Time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content – doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages.
We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been...
Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continuing the species.
A laxity pervades the popular use of words.
Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character but that of a wit.
There is a pleasure in affecting affectation.
We are ashamed at the sight of a monkey – somehow as we are shy of poor relations.
We all have some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering it was an acquired one.
Opinions is a species of property – I am always desirous of sharing.
No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference.
You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.
Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.
As half in shade and half in sun This world along its path advances, May that side the sun ’s upon Be all that e’er shall meet thy glances!
There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.
Presents, I often say, endear absents.
Books which are no books.
My only books Were woman’s looks,- And folly ’s all they ’ve taught me.
No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us, All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.
Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, And multiply each through endless years,- One minute of heaven is worth them all.
He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.