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

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

An ancient prophecy ... pronounced, That the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it!

I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils governed by foolish servants. I have known great ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who preferred none but dunces. I have known men of valor cowards to their wives. I have known men of cunning perpetually cheated. I knew three ministers who would exactly compute and settle the accounts of a kingdom, wholly ignorant of their own economy.

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

Let the French but have England, and they won't want to conquer it.

Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable.