Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.

Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images; and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things.