This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realised.

I hate a man who swallows [his food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.

A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.

No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us, All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.

For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.

The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured.

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!