Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

They are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change.

You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.

You should read books like you take medicine, by advice, and not by advertisement.

"Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are."

Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.

... A power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all men, almost without labour. (1853)