The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept.

A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.

Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.

The rulers of the earth are all worth knowing; they suggest moral reflections: and the respect that one naturally has for God's vice-regents here on earth is greatly increased by acquaintance with them.

It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain; and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.

Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.