Pleasure for others is the only pleasure possible to me. I assure you I'm quite selfish! - I'm greedy for the happiness of those I love - and if they can't or won't be happy I'm perfectly miserable.

The Press nowadays is not a literary press; classic diction and brilliancy of style do not distinguish it by any means.

For though there never was so much reading matter put before the public, there was never less actual 'reading' in the truest and highest sense of the term than there is at present.

There is nothing so depressing as a constant contemplation of one's self, and the greatest moral cowardice in the world's opinion comes from consulting one's own personal convenience.

There is no Death,/What seems so is transition.

If we choose to be no more than clods of clay, then we shall be used as clods of clay for braver feet to tread on.

Imagination is the supreme endowment of the poet and romanticist. It is a kind of second sight, which conveys the owner of it to places he has never seen, and surrounds him with strange circumstances of which he is merely the spiritual eyewitness.