there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal ... we cannot reform for a time or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy.

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

If there be any one habit which more than another is the dry rot of all that is high and generous in youth, it is the habit of ridicule.

An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.

Anticipation is a bad sleeping draught.

It merely shews, after all, that affection is a habit.

One would think that an unsuccessful volume was like a degree in the school of reviewing. One unread work makes the judge bitter enough; but a second failure, and he is quite desperate in his damnation. I do believe one half of the injustice - the severity of 'the ungentle craft' originates in its own want of success: they cannot forgive the popularity which has passed them over.