The frivolous work of polished idleness.

Praise is the symbol which represents sympathy, and which the mind insensibly substitutes for its recollection and language.

Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility.

Those who preached faith, or in other words a pure mind, have always produced more popular virtue than those who preached good acts, or the mere regulation of outward works.

Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions.

The powers of a man's mind are directly proportional to the quantity of coffee he drank.

Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself.