Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of the truth, when we see them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of their zeal for truth, although they contradict themselves every day of their lives.

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers.

Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.

I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.

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.

Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,--frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.