"I have made it a rule of my life to avoid all unnecessary contact with the world."

"I think the English people are a very dull and uninteresting people."

"I have always been of the opinion that the best thing a man can do is to keep his own counsel."

"It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations."

"The English are, so far as I know, the hardest worked people on whom the sun shines. Be content if in their wretched intervals of leisure they read for amusement and do no worse."