To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition; provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.

Smooth your way to the head through the heart. The way of reason is a good one: but it is commonly something longer, and perhapsnot so sure.

If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.

Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon; they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compassto direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel; for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.

Of those who really love their sons, few know how to do it. Some spoil them when they are young, and then quarrel with them when they are grown up, for having been spoiled; some love them like mothers, and attend only to the bodily health and strength of the hopes of their family, solemnize his birthday, and rejoice, like the subjects of the Great Mogul, at the increase of his bulk: while others, minding, as they think, only essentials, take pains and pleasure to see in their heir, all their favourite weaknesses and imperfections.

Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience; which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and ineffective.

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.