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.

There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about.

Westward, beyond the still pleasant, but, even then, no longer solitary, hamlet of Charing, a broad space, broken here and there by scattered houses and venerable pollards, in the early spring of 1467, presented the rural scene for the sports and pastimes of the inhabitants of Westminister and London.

How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel.

Invention is nothing more than a fine deviation from, or enlargement on a fine model . . .

Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than man.

Love like Death,, Levels all ranks, and lays the shepherd's crook Beside the scepter