I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.

Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians.

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

Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.

Oh, we are ridiculous animals; and if the angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them!

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

Two large prominent eyes that rolled about to no purpose (for he was utterly short-sighted) a wide mouth, thick lips and inflated visage, gave him the air of a blind trumpeter. A deep untuneable voice which, instead of modulating, he enforced with unnecsessary pomp, a total neglect of his person, and ignorance of every civil attention, disgusted all who judge by appearance.