There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.

Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.

No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.

Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.

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.

A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.

He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master.