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.

You deny that man is really so prejudiced as I suppose him; talk to him then of some foreign country, ask him what religion he is of.

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

Two men are equally free from the rage of ambition; are they therefore equal in merit? Perhaps not; one may be above ambition, the other below it.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?

Politics is the food of sense exposed to the hunger of folly.

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