Reserve is the truest expression of respect towards those who are its objects.

The peace of nature and of the innocent creatures of god seems to be secure and deep, only so long as the presence of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are not there to trouble its sanctity.

The science of style as an organ of thought, of style in relation to the ideas and feelings, might be called the organology of style.

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.

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.

A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life.