All that is literature seeks to communicate power

Under our present enormous accumulation of books, I do affirm that a most miserable distraction of choice must be very generally incident to the times; that the symptoms of it are in fact very prevalent, and that one of the chief symptoms is an enormous 'gluttonism' for books.

All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

As is the inventor of murder, and the father of art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius.

In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.