When Shakespeare copied chroniclers verbatim, it was because he knew they were good enough for his audiences. In a more polished age he who could so move our passions, could surely have performed the easier task of satisfying our taste.

Two clergymen disputing whether ordination would be valid without the imposition of both hands, the more formal one said, "Do you think the Holy Dove could fly down with only one wing?

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

This world is a comedy, not Life.

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

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

Exercise is the worst thing in the world and as bad an invention as gunpowder.