If venereal delight and the power of propagating the species were permitted only to the virtuous, it would make the world very good.

I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.

I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything.

In comparing these two writers, he [Samuel Johnson] used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and a figurative statement of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners, but I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial plates are brighter.

In every picture there should be shade as well as light.

Quotation is more universal and more ancient than one would perhaps believe.

I have seen many a bear led by a man: but I never before saw a man led by a bear.