When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

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

Our [British] summers are often, though beautiful for verdure, so cold, that they are rather cold winters.

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.

That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: "Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.

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.