When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.

When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.