It is remarkable what fine hands men of genius write, even when they are as awkward in all other uses of the hand as a cow with a musket.

January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow.

Puns are often unacceptable to the feelings; they come like a spoonful of ice-cream in the midst of a comfortable smoking-hot steak, or as a peppery morsel when your palate was in expectation of a mild pudding.

I have a strong opinion that a genuine love of books is one of the greatest blessings of life for man and woman.

The desire to be the object of public attention is weak, but the excessive dread of it is but a form of vanity and over-self-contemplativeness.

When I read or hear of the mutual injuries of England and Ireland, I fancy it would have been a blessed thing had the sea never flowed between the two countries. Had they been all in one, surely there would have been more unity between them of interests and of feelings. But let us hope that days of peace and general enlightenment will arrive by ways past man's finding out.

Religious bigotry is a dull fire - hot enough to roast an ox, but with no lambent, luminous flame shooting up from it.