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

The knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and the brutes.

As marriage produces children, so children produce care and disputes; and wrangling.

General notions are generally wrong.

Nobody should trust their virtue with necessity, the force of which is never known till it is felt, and it is therefore one of the first duties to avoid the temptation of it.

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

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?