A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.

In general, inquiry ceases when we adopt a theory. After that, we overlook whatever makes against it, and see and think, and talk and write, only in its favor. Indeed, when we have a snug, comfortable theory, to which we are much attached, they appear to us as a very mean set of facts that will not square with it.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world - they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.

It is safer to quote what is written than what is spoken. What a man writes it is fair to presume he believes as a matter of general conviction, but it is not so with what he utters in the freedom of conversation. In that he may only express the feeling of the moment, and not his settled judgment, or matured opinion.