We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures

Affectation is to be always distinguished from hypocrisy as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities, which we might with innocence and safety, be known to want. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly.

Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.

It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear.

Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them; and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.

As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.

I also admit, that there are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits which are not good till they are rotten.