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.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

The best philosophy is to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot; bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it.

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.

I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery.

It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.

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.