Bread is the staff of life.

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.

As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

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.

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.