We should not so much esteem our poverty as a misfortune, were it not that the world treats it so much as a crime

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.

Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words.

Character is very much a matter of health.

The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may safely be left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it.

Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.

Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones.