Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms.

Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.

Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age.

If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.

Many a truth is told in jest.