How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.

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

It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.

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

It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.

Cunning is neither the consequence of sense, nor does it give sense. A proof that it is not sense, is that cunning people never imagine that others can see through them. It is the consequence of weakness.

I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.