This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer having a topic presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason of his abstinence.

All people have their blind side-their superstitions.

The laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer.

In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.

We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.

A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal.