“While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.”

“I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.”

“The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you.”

“Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.”

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

“He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own dispositions will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove”

“The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”