Pedants make a great rout about criticism, as if it were a science of great depth, and required much pains and knowledge--criticism however is only the result of good sense, taste and judgment--three qualities that indeed seldom are found together, and extremely seldom in a pedant, which most critics are.

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.

Nothing has shown more fully the prodigious ignorance of human ideas and their littleness, than the discovery of [Sir William] Herschell, that what used to be called the Milky Way is a portion of perhaps an infinite multitude of worlds!

That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: "Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.

I do not dislike the French from the vulgar antipathy between neighboring nations, but for their insolent and unfounded air of superiority.

Lawyers and rogues are vermin not easily rooted out of a rich soil.