I really cannot know whether I am or am not the Genius you are pleased to call me, but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be one."

"For in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour."

I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain."

In general I do not draw well with literary men -- not that I dislike them but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication..