I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.

Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.

We may be willing to tell a story twice, never to hear it more than once.

Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.

Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.

Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.

We have more faith in a well-written romance while we are reading it than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the one case more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of facts in the other.