Some Critics on the Hearth are not only good-natured, but have rather too high, or, if that is impossible, let us say too pronounced, an opinion of the abilities of their literary friends.

One forgives the critic - perhaps - but never the good-natured friend.

It doesn't sound too good to say I am the son of a landowner, so let us rather say I am the grandson of exploited Galician peasants.

To the truly benevolent mind, indeed, nothing is more satisfactory than to hear of a miser denying himself the necessaries of life a little too far and ridding us of his presence altogether.

Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.

In England, literary pretence is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education.