While selfishness joins hands with no one of the virtues, benevolence is allied to them all.

He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleas'd he could whistle them back.

I have seen her and sister cry over a book for an hour together, and they said, they liked the book the better the more it made them cry.

It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger.

I fancy the character of a poet is in every country the same,--fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future; his conversation that of a man of sense, his actions those of a fool.

The Europeans are themselves blind who describe fortune without sight. No first-rate beauty ever had finer eyes, or saw more clearly. They who have no other trade but seeking their fortune need never hope to find her; coquette-like, she flies from her close pursuers, and at last fixes on the plodding mechanic who stays at home and minds his business.

Aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crush'd or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around.