Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

The number of such as live without the ardour of inquiry is very small, though many content themselves with cheap amusements, and waste their lives in researches of no importance.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances.

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.

In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.