The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.

This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.

Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.

Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotch man happy!

Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.