I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.
Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.
Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.
A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.
Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.
The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it.
I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.
He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.
No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
The really happy woman is the one who can enjoy the scenery when she has to take a detour. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but rather a manner of traveling.
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
For who is pleased with himself.
My diseases are an asthma and a dropsy and, what is less curable, seventy-five.
In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.
Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.