Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.

Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

Business first; pleasure afterwards.

It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place [the Round Reading room of the British Museum] without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for my English birthright, freely to partake of these beautiful books, and speak the truth I find there.

If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!