There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, "That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults." Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.

As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.

It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.

When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him.