Certain I am that every author who has written a book with earnest forethought and fondly cherished designs will bear testimony to the fact that much which he meant to convey has never been guessed at in any review of his work; and many a delicate beauty of thought, on which he principally valued himself, remains, like the statue of Isis, an image of truth from which no hand lifts the veil.

Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit; for while the former makes us all nerve to the opinion of others, the latter is perfectly satisfied with its opinion of itself.

Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star did ye drink in your liquid melancholy?

As a general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner; and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, snivelling bit of saintship about him which is enough to make him a humbug.

I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child.

He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.

It is the glorious doom of literature that the evil perishes and the good remains. Even when the original author of some healthy and useful truth is forgotten, the truth survives, transplanted to works more calculated to purify it from error, and perpetuate it to our benefit.