It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the distinctions which set one man so much above another are very little perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of mortal beings finds nothing left him but the consciousness of innocence.

A blaze first pleases and then tires the sight.

To be prejudiced is always to be weak; yet there are prejudices so near to laudable that they have been often praised and are always pardoned.