O wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound; Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; Created sick, commanded to be sound.

It would be doing cunning too much honor to call it an inferior species of true discernment.

Have you never seen a strange unconnected deformed representation of a figure, which seen in another point of view, became proportioned and agreeable? It is the picture of man.

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

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.

Though beauty is, with the most apt similitude, I had almost said with the most literal truth, called a flower that fades and dies almost in the very moment of its maturity; yet there is, methinks, a kind of beauty which lives even to old age; a beauty that is not in the features, but, if I may be allowed the expression, shines through them. As it is not merely corporeal it is not the object of mere sense, nor is it to be discovered but by persons of true taste and refined sentiment.

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