To occupy an inch of dusty shelf-to have the title of their works read now and then in a future age by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler, and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance. Such is the amount of boasted immortality.

Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its sober realities. It renders the stockjobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment.

The literary world is made up of little confederacies, each looking upon its own members as the lights of the universe; and considering all others as mere transient meteors, doomed soon to fall and be forgotten, while its own luminaries are to shine steadily on to immortality.

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.

Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad who are under the discipline of shrews at home.

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.

Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant.

It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man-the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse-the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.

Those who are well assured of their own standing are least apt to trepass on that of others.