You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.

If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.

The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate.

Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.

The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.