Be not ashamed to confess that you have been in the wrong. It is but owning that you now have more sense than you had before, to see your error; more humility to acknowledge it; more grace to correct it.

Men of superior vivacity and wit, when they take a wrong turn, are generally worse than other men: because wit, consisting in a lively representation of ideas assembled together, gives every sensible object those heightening touches, and that striking imagery, which is unknown to men of slower apprehensions: wit being to sensible objects, what light is to bodies; it does not merely show them as they are in themselves: it gives an adventitious colour, which is not a property inherent in them: it lends them beauties which are not their own.

We see how much a man has, and therefore we envy him; did we see how little he enjoys, we should rather pity him.

That wit is truly amiable, which gladdens and enlivens every thing, which shines with a lustre gentle, but not faint, and powerful, but not glaring.

Finite mind cannot comprehend infinity.

For we seldom admire the wit, when we dislike the man.

Great wits, like great beauties, look upon mere esteem as a flat insipid thing; nothing less than admiration will content them.