To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar

They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present.

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.

Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.

The authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble out of the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same orders.

A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.

I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.