[I]n the gloomy month of February.... The Deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than the streets of London at such a time.

Poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land.

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?

A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.

There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor.

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

For what is history, but... huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were holding up a monument to the honor, rather than the infamy of our species.