Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain; good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them; for they prove, at least, our power, and show that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falsehood.

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

Instead of rating the man by his performances, we rate too frequently the performances by the man.

It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God; whether God is just; whether this life is the only state of existence.

The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.