Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!

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

No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.

There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is--to teach; the function of the second is--to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.

I feel that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible.