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.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.

No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially and expressing his meaning.

I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

For ever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine.