He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.

When any one person or body of men seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one.

I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.

O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.