He (Macaulay) has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
You never say a word of yourself, dear Lady Grey. You have that dreadful sin of anti-egotism.
I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise very well.
Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come; desire is the wish it may come.
I never believe facts; Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.
Men whose trade is rat-catching, love to catch rats; the bug destroyer seizes on his bug with delight; and the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice.
Never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.
Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.
Men whose trade is rat-catching love to catch rats; the bug destroyer seizes on his bug with delight; the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice.
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.
No furniture is so charming as books.
I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Errors, to be dangerous, must have a great deal of truth mingled with them. It is only from this alliance that they can ever obtain an extensive circulation.
What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight.
Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737.
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.
