No.—No is a surly, honest fellow, speaks his mind rough and round at once.—Walter Scott.
Learn to say No! and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.—Spurgeon.
The woman who really wishes to refuse contents herself with saying No. She who explains wants to be convinced.—Alfred de Musset.
Nobility.—Virtue is the first title of nobility.—Molière.
Nonsense.—Nonsense is to sense as shade to light—it heightens effect.—Fred. Saunders.
Nothing.—There is nothing useless to men of sense; clever people turn everything to account.—Fontaine.
Variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.—Richter.
Novels.—Novels are sweet. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men,—Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians,—are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers.—Thackeray.
We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The canon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor and reign at the universities, but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose.—Balzac.
A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious, and low.—Swift.