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.

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.

Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.

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

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.

Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it.