My health is so often impaired that I begin to be as weary of it as mending old lace; when it is patched in one place, it breaks out in another.

We are educated in the grossest ignorance, and no art omitted to stifle our natural reason; if some few get above their nurses instructions, our knowledge must rest concealed and be as useless to the world as gold in the mine.

In short I will part with anything for you but you.

Copiousness of words, however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings.

Only a mother knows a mother's fondness.

My dear Smollett ... disgraces his talent by writing those stupid romances called history.

We are apt to consider Shakespeare only as a poet; but he was certainly one of the greatest moral philosophers that ever lived.