When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book; it is good, and is the work of a master-hand.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

There is no employment in the world so laborious as that of making to one's self a great name; life ends before one has scarcely made the first rough draught of his work.

The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.

It is easier to enrich ourselves with a thousand virtues, than to correct ourselves of a single fault.

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.

There are some who speak one moment before they think