He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.

Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.

Guilt once harbored in the conscious breast, intimidates the brave, degrades the great.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality.

Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.

You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.