A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.

Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.

For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.

Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last.