Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords.

Each person's work is always a portrait of himself.

A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain: what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty.

It is scarcely credible to what degree discernment may be dazzled by the mist of pride, and wisdom infatuated by the intoxication of flattery.