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

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.

Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved.

There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents; every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.

Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.

We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.