The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die.

The majority of a society is the true definition of the public.

He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.

The art of the writer, like that of the player, is attained by slow degrees. The power of distinguishing and discriminating comick characters, or of filling tragedy with poetical images, must be the gift of nature, which no instruction nor labour can supply; but the art of dramatick disposition, the contexture of the scenes, the involution of the plot, the expedients of suspension, and the strategems of surprise, are to be learned by practice.