A poet who makes use of a worse word instead of a better, because the former fits the rhyme or the measure, though it weakens the sense, is like a jeweller, who cuts a diamond into a brilliant, and diminishes the weight to make it shine more.

Lord Bath used to say of women, who are apt to say that they will follow their own judgment, that they could not follow a worse guide.

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.

It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity; because impossible to divest one's self of self-love.

Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.

The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveler from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.

How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.