We might have been - these are but common words, and yet they make the sum of life's bewailing.

English people ... never speak, excepting in cases of fire or murder, unless they are introduced.

Knowledge is much like dust - it sticks to one, one does not know how.

I do not think that life has a suspense more sickening than that of expecting a letter which does not come.

though fortune's wheel is generally on the turn, sometimes when it gets into the mud, it sticks there.

It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself.

Every other species of talent carries with it its eternity; we enjoy the work of the poet, the painter, the sculptor, only as thousands will do after us; but the actor - his memory is with his generation, and that passes away.