When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.

Those graces which from their presumed facility encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable.

Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy.

All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman, Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings.

A lady of fashion will sooner excuse a freedom flowing from admiration than a slight resulting from indifference.

All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay and present praise.

Fashion is the veriest goddess of semblance and of shade; to be happy is of far less consequence to her worshippers than to appear so; even pleasure itself they sacrifice to parade, and enjoyment to ostentation.