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.

The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.

I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called "A Voyage round the world."

I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.

The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it.

It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together, because it gives his answerer double work.