Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.

A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.

The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.

A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.

The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner.

The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one.

They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.