Men prominent in life are mostly hard to converse with. They lack small-talk, and at the same time one doesn't like to confront them with their own great themes.

The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.

Beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied.

True dandyism is the result of an artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limits of fashion.

It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait.

A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many hearts lost to her.

Not that I had any special reason for hating school. Strange as it may seem to my readers, I was not unpopular there. I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.