It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it.

Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.

I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher.

When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses,--to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination.

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.