It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote.

And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.

No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.

Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.

He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day will often bring to his task attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.

We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful.