It is surely one of the strangest of our propensities to mark out those we love best for the worst usage; yet we do, all of us. We can take any freedom with a friend; we stand on no ceremony with a friend.

What if two negatives make an affirmative ...does it follow that two nobodies shall be some body?

The ancient gentleman who has seen the world, who is profoundly experienced, and much too deep to be the dupe of an age so shallow as this, is to be won by an admiring glance at the brilliancy of his knee-buckle; praise his very pigtail, and you may lead him by it.

As success converts treason into legitimacy, so belief converts fiction into fact, and "nothing is but what is not.

Shall we not rejoice then and revel in the glorious liberty of extract, and quote to the thousandth line? Shall we not have pages like the Pyramids?

For the author there is nothing but his pen, till that and life are worn to the stump: and then, with good fortune, perhaps on his death-bed he receives a pension and equals, it may be, for a few months, the income of a retired butler!

Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem: There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground But holds some joy of silence or of sound, Some spirits begotten of a summer dream.