In my Lucia's absence Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden; I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear, And grief, and rage and love rise up at once, And with variety of pain distract me.

It is pleasant to see a notorious profligate seized with a concern for religion, and converting his spleen into zeal.

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.

The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace.

It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them.

Our Grub-street biographers watch for the death of a great man like so many undertakers on purpose to make a penny of him.

One would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started into discourse; but, instead of this we find that conversation is never so much straightened and confined, as in numerous assemblies.