The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.

Though fear should lend him pinions like the wind, yet swifter fate will seize him from behind.

Come, agree, the law's costly.

Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.

Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.

If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other geometrical terms.

What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.