Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.

All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world; or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.

But in all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favour arts and letter, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind.

Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens the water about him till he becomes invisible.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.