Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.

The habit of pleasing by flattery makes a language soft; the fear of offending by truth makes it circuitous and conventional.

There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.

When the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it grows corrupt and groveling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be found at home.

O Music! how it grieves me that imprudence, intemperance, gluttony, should open their channels into thy sacred stream.

Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, to everything but the amendment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us.

Truth sometimes corner unawares upon Caution, and sometimes speaks in public as unconsciously as in a dream.