When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence.

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

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.

Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget.

there is no reasoning with imagination.

sometimes the very faults of parents produce a tendency to opposite virtues in their children.

How success changes the opinion of men!