The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.

Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.

The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it.

Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it.