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

“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 obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremem) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting an animal to death?' I forget the decision.”

“Don't introduce me to that man! I want to go on hating him, and I can't hate a man whom I know.”

“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 to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.”

“'That Enough Is As Good As a Feast'...The inventor of [this saying] did not believe it himself....Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time to himself, are not muck — however we may be pleased to scandalise with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for us.”

“Dream not...of having tasted all the grandeur & wildness of Fancy, till you have gone mad.”

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