Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age; last 1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I had as much enjoyment from books as I ever had in my life.

The labor of thinking was so great to me, that having once come to a conclusion upon any subject, I would rather persist in it, right or wrong, than be at the trouble of going over the process again to revise and rectify my judgment.

If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.

Those who have lived in a house with spoiled children must have a lively recollection of the degree of torment they can inflict upon all who are within sight or hearing.

There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is a virtue; the other, a vice.

The everlasting quotation-lover dotes on the husks of learning.

Fortune's wheel never stands still the highest point is therefore the most perilous.