How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy! Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi.

To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless, living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?

An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.