Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary; but yet it is not easy to avoid.

All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses.

The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear.

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.

Human experience, which is constantly contradicting theory, is the great test of truth. A system, built upon the discoveries of a great many minds, is always of more strength, than what is produced by the mere workings of any one mind, which, of itself, can do very little. There is not so poor a book in the world that would not be a prodigious effort were it wrought out entirely by a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators.