Not to ask is not be denied.

I maintain, against the enemies of the stage, that patterns of piety, decently represented, may second the precepts.

All habits gather by unseen degrees.

Bets at first were fool-traps, where the wise like spiders lay in ambush for the flies.

Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.

Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,--I mean good-nature,--are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.

He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . He was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. . . . He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating in to clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him.