Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.

You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.

He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.

The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er; And hearts that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more.

In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from the binding.

Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

Merit, God knows, is very little rewarded.