[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.

The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrationa bipeds who hurt only themselves.

Nature's hasty conscience.

wit is often its own worst enemy.

a straight line is the shortest possible line between any two points - an axiom equally true in morals as in mathematics.

Now flattery can never do good; twice cursed in the giving and the receiving, it ought to be.

there is no reasoning with imagination.