A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.
Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.
I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father’s religion, if they can find out what it is.
I’d like to grow very old as slowly as possible.
We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.
New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.
Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected.
For thy sake, tobacco, I would do anything but die.
If dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.
It is with some violation of the imagination that we conceive of an actor belonging to the relations of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind with the characters which they assume upon the stage.
The true poet dreams being awake.
Trample not on the ruins of a man.
I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the license of friendship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton.
Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness.
Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and, if you relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket.
It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar surface.
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.
I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices – made up of likings and dislikings.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.
What is reading, but silent conversation.