Consultation and compliance can conduce little to the perfection of any literary performance; for whoever is so doubtful of his own abilities as to encourage the remarks of others, will find himself every day embarrassed with new difficulties, and will harass his mind, in vain, with the hopeless labour of uniting heterogeneous ideas, digesting independent hints, and collecting into one point the several rays of borrowed light, emitted often with contrary directions.

Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

Keeping accounts, sir, is of no use when a man is spending his own money, and has nobody to whom he is to account. You won't eat less beef today because you have written down what it cost yesterday.

Language is the dress of thought.

Men hate more steadily than they love.

It is observed of gold, by an old epigrammatist, that to have it is to be in fear, and to want it is to be in sorrow.