There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.

to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.

Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.

There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring - or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps - lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.