Real vision is the ability to see the invisible.

When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries-Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where the genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.

When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.

By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.