We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction.

Security will produce danger.

Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.

Nay, Sir, those who write in them, write well, in order to be paid well.

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.

The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.

Persius has justly observed, that knowledge is nothing to him who is not known by others to possess it: to the scholar himself it is nothing with respect either to honour or advantage, for the world cannot reward those qualities which are concealed from it; with respect to others it is nothing, because it affords no help to ignorance or errour.