No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.

Nature always springs to the surface and manages to show what she is. It is vain to stop or try to drive her back. She breaks through every obstacle, pushes forward, and at last makes for herself a way.

Happy who in his verse can gently steer, From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.

Nothing but truth is lovely, nothing fair.

Ignorance is always ready to admire itself. Procure yourself critical friends.

All men are fools, and with every effort they differ only in the degree.

Though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a lowborn meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident.