If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher's cleaver.

There is, in fact, no law or government at all; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them.

The devil hath not, in all his quiver's choice, An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.

What's drinking? A mere pause from thinking!

It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.

The art of angling, the cruelest, the coldest and the stupidest of pretended sports.