beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it; tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.

The man's (a heathen south sea islander) a human being, just as I am; he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.

Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the art of smoking.

Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!

The world's a ship on its voyage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

A beautiful woman is born Queen of men and women both, as Mary Stuart was born Queen of Scots, whether men or women.