I cannot see why a taste for the country should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.

All sweeping assertions are erroneous.

The truth is, we like to talk over our disasters, because they are ours; and others like to listen, because they are not theirs.

Curiosity is its own suicide.

I have a respect for family pride. If it be a prejudice, it is a prejudice in its most picturesque shape. But I hold it is connected with some of the noblest feelings in our nature.

What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions.

it is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are.