What is reading, but silent conversation.

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it...

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.

Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other.

I love to lose myself in other men’s minds.

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father’s religion, if they can find out what it is.

There is more reason to say grace before beginning a book than there is to say it before beginning to dine.

It is good to love the unknown.

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.

I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer’s, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, ‘Whether supposing that the flavour of a big who...

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment.

Pain is life – the sharper, the more evidence of life.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives’ fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

I’d like to grow very old as slowly as possible.

Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.

The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.

The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen.

The young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not...

Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.

Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.

Lawyers, I suppose were once children.

Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.

Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives.

New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.

Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.

Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father’s dwelling?

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.

I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days – All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book.

I could never hate anyone I knew.

The beggar wears all colors fearing none.

She unbent her mind afterwards – over a book.

We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.

I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.

Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.

The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one’s soul shine through. If there are places on your body...

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.

Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.

Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.