The way to acquire lasting esteem is not by the fewness of a writer's faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both.

I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.

I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well.

Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion of iniquity.

Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery, furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tire-women, mechanically influence the mind into veneration; an emperor in his nightcap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,- A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.

When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?