We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.

The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.

The charm of London is that you are never glad or sorry for ten minutes together; in the country you are one or the other for weeks.

Health is certainly more valuable than money; because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly, but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness.

They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.

The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.

Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.