In our present high state of civilization, people are so much alike, that anything at all odd comes on one with the freshness and character of an antique coin among smooth shillings.

Well, great authors are great people - but I believe that they are best seen at a distance.

I have still the best comforts of life - books and friendships - and I trust never to lose my relish for either.

To think of playing cricket for hard cash! Money and gentility would ruin any pastime under the sun.

... they know little of the passions who seek to argue with that most intractable of them all, the fear that is born of love.

Nothing so pretty to look at as my garden!

Buonaparte is certainly writing, or rather dictating, his memoirs. He walks backwards and forwards with his hands behind him, and dictates so fast that two or three of his suite are obliged to be in attendance, that the one may take down one-half of a sentence, and another the rest; they then literally compare notes, and put the disjointed legs and wings and heads of periods together. This is writing a book as he fought a battle.