Indolence is the devil's cushion.

The imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens... The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform.

All discourse of which others cannot partake is not only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleasure and entertainment, but, what never fails to excite resentment, an insolent assertion of superiority, and a triumph over less enlightened understandings. The pedant is, therefore, not only heard with weariness but malignity; and those who conceive themselves insulted by his knowledge never fail to tell with acrimony how injudiciously it was exerted.

Complaints are vain; we will try to. do better another time. To-morrow and to-morrow. A few designs and a few failures, and the time of designing is past.

There should be a stated day for commemorating the birthday of our Savior, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.

Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.

High people, sir, are the best; take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman.