A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.

A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.

To pile up honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness.

Beholding heaven, and feeling hell.

Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Faerie Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrews's Sermons?

Oh, breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid

I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible.