Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning!

As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.

Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles.

All history was at first oral.

When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon another.

Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of cookery.

You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.