We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.

I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.

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.