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

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

“Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.”

“I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.”

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

“I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading.”

“Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!”