There are three difficulties in authorship;-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game; in which the Booksellers are the Kings; The Critics the Knaves; the Public, the Pack; and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.

There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.

The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good.

The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason.

It is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb.

For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.

Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes; those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth; we shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other.