The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, - attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.

Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish.

Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.