“No furniture is so charming as books.”

“I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.”

“Mankind are always happy for having happiness. So if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years from now by the memory of it. ”

“The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.”

“we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today”

“Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.”

“Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.”