Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women;—a vast number of clever, hard-headed men. - William Makepeace Thackeray

O blessed idleness! Divine lazy nymph! Reach me a novel as I lie in my dressing-gown at three o'clock in the afternoon; compound a sherry-cobbler for me, and bring me a cigar! Dear slatternly, smiling Enchantress! They may assail thee with bad names — swear thy character away, and call thee the Mother of Evil; but, for all that, thou art the best company in the world!

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?