Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.

The greatest Inventions were produced in Times of Ignorance; as the Use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Germans.

Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.

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.