[The] taste [of the French] is too timid to be true taste--or is but half taste.

I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel - a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

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

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

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.

The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other.

The prosecution of [Warren] Hastings, though he should escape at last, must have good effect. It will alarm the servants of the Company in India, that they may not always plunder with impunity, but that there may be a retrospect; and it will show them that even bribes of diamonds to the Crown may not secure them from prosecution.