How seldom is generosity perfect and pure! How often do men give because it throws a certain inferiority on those who receive, and superiority on themselves!

Might not most men be as well named boys grown old.

Taste may be compared to that exquisite sense of the bee, which instantly discovers and extracts the quintessence of every flower, and disregards all the rest of it.

There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty.

How happy is it for us, that the admiration of others should depend so much more on their ignorance than our perfection!

Pleasure is the business of the young, business the pleasure of the old.

It is in numberless instances happier to have a false opinion which we believe true, than a true one of which we doubt.