Just as old age is creeping on space, And clouds come o'er the sunset of our day, They kindly leave us, though not quite alone, But in good company--the gout or stone.

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

I should like to know who has been carried off, except poor dear me - I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan war.

Romances paint at full length people's wooing. But only give a bust of marriages.

I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.

Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his main-spring of Mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar of atoms.

Good but rarely came from good advice.