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

You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.

What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.

Leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

You think I love flattery (says Dr. Johnson), and so I do; but a little too much always disgusts me: that fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.