There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.

Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.

Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.

The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.