There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.

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.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.