I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.

I can forgive injuries, but never benefits.

Cunning is neither the consequence of sense, nor does it give sense. A proof that it is not sense, is that cunning people never imagine that others can see through them. It is the consequence of weakness.

Dr. Calder [a Unitarian minister] said of Dr. [Samuel] Johnson on the publications of Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi, that he was like Actaeon, torn to pieces by his own pack.

One's mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time, one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both.

The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other.

How posterity will laugh at us, one way or other! If half a dozen break their necks, and balloonism is exploded, we shall be called fools for having imagined it could be brought to use: if it should be turned to account, we shall be ridiculed for having doubted.