Peaceable times are the best to live in, though not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.

There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance

See in what peace a Christian can die.

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacence, if they discover none of the like in themselves.

I never knew a critic who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself--as the hangman is generally a worse malefactor than the criminal that suffers by his hand.