It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low.

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

The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.

It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.

An excuse is a lie guarded.

My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me, and friendship of each other.