Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful.

Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

If I can in any way contribute to the Diversion or Improvement of the Country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret Satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.

Riches are apt to betray a man into arrogance.

Thy steady temper, Portius, Can look on guilt, rebellion, fraud, and Cæsar, In the calm lights of mild philosophy.

In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.