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.

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

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.

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

wit is often its own worst enemy.

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

[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.