Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.

I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning to compose, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to improve in speed than in accuracy.

The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances.

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.

The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside

Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.