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.

Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.

When thus the heart is in a vein Of tender thought, the simplest strain Can touch it with peculiar power.

Positively, the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing, and next to that perhaps — good works.

Presents, I often say, endear absents.

There is absolutely no such thing as reading but by a candle. We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, and in sultry arbours, but it was labor thrown away. Those gay motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teasing, like so many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writers digests his meditations. By the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour.

She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book.