Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.

Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of the child.

Envy is littleness of soul.

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.

It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.

Experience makes us wise.

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