Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.

A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.

Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.

The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one.

People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.