There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation.

As any action or posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs, so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

He that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the public judgement. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.

It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.