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

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.

She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.

This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.

Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.