An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age.

After all, it is style alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style.

The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory.

Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause.

There is an art of reading, an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves - the creature of habits and infirmities.

Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.