I do not think that what is called Love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden tresses or raven locks; - and when we meet with a complete example of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck.

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.

The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate; he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.

We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.

The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.