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

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

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.

The public is a bad guesser.

It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them.

here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.

Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.