That which is always within our reach, is always the last thing we take; and the chances are, that what we can do every day, we never do at all.

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.

There is no wretchedness like self-reproach.

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.

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.

Good taste is his religion, his morality, his standard, and his test.