it is more to my personal happiness and advantage to indulge the love and admiration of excellence, than to cherish a secret envy of it.

I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended, and patient when there be no redress.

You will find many a creature by earth, air, and water, that is more beautiful than a woman.

I never invite idiots to my house.

Few people know anything of the English history but what they learn from Shakespear; for our story is rather a tissue of personal adventures and catastrophes than a series of political events.

Will an intelligent spectator not admire the prodigeous structures of Stone-Henge because he does not know by what law of mechanics they were raised?

Our collection of men is very antique, they stand in my list thus: A man of sense, a little rusty, a beau a good deal the worse for wearing, a coxcomb extremely shattered, a pretty gentleman very insipid, a baronet very solemn, a squire very fat, a fop much affected, a barrister learned in Coke upon Littleton, but who knows nothing of `long ways for marry as will', an heir apparent, very awkward; which of these will cast a favourable eye upon me I don't know.