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

If it were a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar's purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt for learning - but for these. . .the number of authors and of writing would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold.

Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.

There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.

This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.

That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday