"We who have lived before railways were made, belong to another world. […] It was only yesterday; but what a gulph between now and then? Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armour, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, ancient Britons, painted blue, and so forth—all these belong to the old period. […] But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. […] We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark."

"The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair […,] it stings me now as I write."

"Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them."

"Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women;—a vast number of clever, hard-headed men."

"George, be a King!"

"It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England."

"Bravery never goes out of fashion."

"We are most of us very lonely in the world. You who have any who love you, cling to them, and thank God."

"Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you."

"Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?"

"To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness?"

"'Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have even a life-enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years' lease."

"If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied."

"Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish."

"Who does not believe his first passion eternal?"

"I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses."

"He that has ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton."

"I would rather make my name than inherit it."

"Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?"

"When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it."

"Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so?"

"Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered."

"The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is for ever in a passion."

"The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter’s bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And, when he’s laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that’s anything but gay."

"Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang: “Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long!”"

"Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter."

"Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter."

"Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin, That never has known the barber’s shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin,— Wait till you come to Forty Year."

"Christmas is here: Winds whistle shrill, Icy and chill, Little care we: Little we fear Weather without, Sheltered about The Mahogany Tree."

"This a noble dish is— A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo."

"People hate, as they love, unreasonably."

"Bad husbands will make bad wives."

"If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and if we die deplores us forever and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom—whence it passes with the pure soul beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!"

"We see flowers of good blooming in foul places."

"How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!"

"If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!"

"As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best."

"Although I enter not, Yet round about the spot Ofttimes I hover, And near the sacred gate, With longing eyes I wait, Expectant of her."

"Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my boy, … of the fourth estate … There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous."

"Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman."

"Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny."

"It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too."

"Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little"

"Humour is the mistress of tears; she knows the way to the fons lachrymarum, strikes in dry and rugged places with her enchanting wand, and bids the fountain gush and sparkle. She has refreshed myriads more from her natural springs, than ever tragedy has watered from her pompous old urn."

"There is no man that teaches us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison."

"One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humour."

"I suppose as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion; bravery and virtue conquer beauty: and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own."

"Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things: narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly."

"Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society—the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?"

"That which we call a Snob, by any other name would still be Snobbish."