[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.