The public have neither shame or gratitude.

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

Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.

A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.

Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.

In what we really understand, we reason but little.