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

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning.

Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.

To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.

Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain.

I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions; and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min