We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.

The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate; he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.

I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it - between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power.

The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.

Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.