Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious.

It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination.

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.

The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we’re talking about.

Self-denial is a monkish virtue.

It is evident, from their method of propagation, that a couple of cats, in fifty years, would stock a whole kingdom; and if that religious veneration were still paid them, it would, in twenty more, not only be easier in Egypt to find a god than a man, which Petronius says was the case in some parts of Italy; but the gods must at last entirely starve the men, and leave themselves neither priests nor votaries remaining.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.