The doom and burthen of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.
The cruellest lies are often told in silence.
The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing, and avoids your eye.
The captain has said too much or he has said too little, and I’m bound to say that I require an explanation of his words.
The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind.
So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts.
So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
Sir, with no intention to take offense, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.[said Captain Smollett]
Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment.