The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty.

Inquiries into the heart are not for man.

The imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens... The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform.

Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.

A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed