Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.

It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.

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

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.