Nature is indeed a specious ward, nay, there is a great deal in it if it is properly understood and applied, but I cannot bear to hear people using it to justify what common sense must disavow. Is not Nature modifed by art in many things? Was it not designed to be so? And is it not happy for human society that it is so? Would you like to see your husband let his beard grow, until he would be obliged to put the end of it in his pocket, because this beard is the gift of Nature?

Miserable is the fate of writers: if they are agreeable, they are offensive; and if dull, they starve.

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

Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.

... if it were the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed.

I know a love may be revived which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity has extinguished, but there is no returning from a dTgovt given by satiety.

I have often observ'd the loudest Laughers to be the dullest Fellows in the Company.