The way to ensure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.

It amazes me when I hear any person prefer blindness to deafness. Such a person must have a terrible dread of being alone. Blindness makes one totally dependent on others, and deprives us of every satisfaction that results from light.

[French] authors are more afraid of offending delicacy and rules, than ambitious of sublimity.

I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours.

Art is the filigrain of a little mind, and is twisted and involved and curled, but would reach farther if laid out in a straight line.

The sure way of judging whether our first thoughts are judicious, is to sleep on them. If they appear of the same force the next morning as they did over night, and if good nature ratifies what good sense approves, we may be pretty sure we are in the right.

I am persuaded that foolish writers and foolish readers are created for each other; and that fortune provides readers as she does mates for ugly women.