The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must at last return

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.