Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.

To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.

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

The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.

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

In love we do not think of moral qualities, and scarcely of intellectual ones. Temperament and manner alone, with beauty, excite love.

This is the test and triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before our eyes and under our feet, though we have had no suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength of intuition, of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain it.