[On collectors of quotations:] How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets.

It is quite fitting that charity should begin at home ... but then it should not end at home; for those that help nobody will find none to help them in time of need.

why will friends publish all the trash they can scrape together of celebrated people?

I ... practiced all the arts of apology, evasion, and invisibility, to which procrastinators must sooner or later be reduced.

It is not so easy to do good as those who have never attempted it may imagine.

Beauties are always curious about beauties, and wits about wits.

you've always been living on prospects; for my part, I'd rather have a mole-hill in possession than a mountain in prospect.