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.

One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention; and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.

Instead of rating the man by his performances, we rate too frequently the performances by the man.

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

Art hath an enemy called ignorance.

I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject.