There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.

Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon on all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment.

The literary world is made up of little confederacies, each looking upon its own members as the lights of the universe; and considering all others as mere transient meteors, doomed to soon fall and be forgotten, while its own luminaries are to shine steadily into immortality.

There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government.

The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.

Some minds corrode and grow inactive under the loss of personal liberty; others grow morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and imaginitive in the loneliness of confinement. He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody.

I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.