Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.

The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.

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."

When dunces are satiric, I take it for a panegyric.

Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise but he that is without it.