In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.

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.

There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.

Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.

Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.