Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.

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

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.

I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!

I allow no hot-beds in the gardens of Parnassus.

Why are we never quite at ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.

No work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself,--the most unwholesome of food.