Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist.

No, Sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, than by hospitality.

In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it; for he that lives well cannot be despised.

Sir, sorrow is inherent in humanity. As you cannot judge two and two to be either five, or three, but certainly four, so, when comparing a worse present state with a better which is past, you cannot but feel sorrow. It is not cured by reason, but by the incursion of present objects, which bear out the past.

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain: what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty.