I am persuaded there is no such thing after all as a perfect enjoyment of solitude; for the more delicious the solitude the more one wants a companion.

Table talk, to be perfect, should be sincere without bigotry, differing without discord, sometimes grave, always agreeable, touching on deep points, dwelling most on seasonable ones, and letting everybody speak and be heard.

The most fascinating women are those that can most enrich the every day moments of existence. In a particular and attaching sense, they are those that can partake our pleasures and our pains in the liveliest and most devoted manner. Beauty is little without this; with it she is triumphant.

When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.

There is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense.

The perfection of conversational intercourse is when the breeding of high life is animated by the fervor of genius.

A friend of ours, who is an admirer of Isaac Walton, was struck, just as we were, with the likeness of the old angler's face to a fish.