The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.

We have more faith in a well-written romance while we are reading it than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the one case more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of facts in the other.

Love at first sight is only realizing an imagination that has always haunted us; or meeting with a face, a figure, or cast of expression in perfection that we have seen and admired in a less degree or in less favorable circumstances a hundred times before.

The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others; or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.