I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.

The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.

As every man is hunted by his own daemon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity.

Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

We read often with as much talent as we write.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.