Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

I would fain ask one of these bigotted Infidels, supposing all the great Points of Atheism... were laid together and formed into a kind of Creed, according to the Opinions of the most celebrated Atheists; I say, supposing such a Creed as this were formed, and imposed upon any one People in the World, whether it would not require an infinitely greater Measure of Faith, than any Set of Articles which they so violently oppose.

The talent of turning men into ridicule, and exposing to laughter those one converses with, is the qualification of little ungenerous tempers.

A brother's sufferings claim a brother's pity.

Music, when thus applied, raises noble hints in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture.