There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.

When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name.

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.

What we call the Irish Brogue is no sooner discovered, than it makes the deliverer, in the last degree, ridiculous and despised; and, from such a mouth, an Englishman expects nothing but bulls, blunders, and follies.

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.

The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.