Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.

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.

The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.

The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.

To be forward to praise others implies either great eminence, that can afford to, part with applause; or great quickness of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments; or great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love.

A felon could plead "benefit of clergy" and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the "neck verse", which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.