The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.

Uncommon expressions are a disfigurement rather than an embellishment of discourse.

Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Apart from the representational content of an idea there is another component: its force and vivacity, its impetus.

Art may make a suite of clothes, but nature must produce a man.