If I can in any way contribute to the Diversion or Improvement of the Country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret Satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.

Should the whole frame of nature round him break, In ruin and confusion hurled, He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack, And stand secure amidst a falling world.

The peacock in all his pride does not display half the colors that appear in the garments of a British lady when she is dressed.

Must one rash word, the infirmity of age, throw down the merit of my better years?

Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.