Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.

Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor.

We all cry out that the world is corrupt,--and I fear too justly,--but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that itis our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time.

I'll not hurt thee, says Uncle Toby, rising with the fly in his hand. Go, he says, opening the window to let it escape. Why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.

What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in every thing, and who, having eyes to see, what time and chance are perpetually holding out to him as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his hands on.