I doubt whether I ever read any description of scenery which gave me an idea of the place described.

Though they were Liberals they were not democrats; nor yet infidels.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

Of Dickens' style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules... No young novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens.

When a man wants to write a book full of unassailable facts, he always goes to the British Museum.

That girls should not marry for money we are all agreed. A lady who can sell herself for a title or an estate, for an income or aset of family diamonds, treats herself as a farmer treats his sheep and oxen--makes hardly more of herself, of her own inner self, in which are comprised a mind and soul, than the poor wretch of her own sex who earns her bread in the lowest state of degradation.

She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.