A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.

Too great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous.

Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest ma to do.

We are valued in this world at the rate we desire to be valued.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste.

The sublime only paints the true, and that too in noble objects; it paints it in all its phases, its cause and its effect; it is the most worthy expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds cannot find out the exact expression, and use synonymes.