What an antithetical mind! - tenderness, roughness - delicacy, coarseness - sentiment, sensuality - soaring and groveling, dirt and deity - all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!

I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes - and as cold as Charity, Chastity or any other Virtue.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

Land of lost gods and godlike men.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

But beef is rare within these oxless isles; Goat's flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton; And, when a holiday upon them smiles, A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.

I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or noble one, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me.