Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances.

Stand Firm for your country, and become a man Honour'd and lov'd: It were a noble life, To be found dead, embracing her.

In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.

Such is the state of every age, every sex, and every condition: all have their cares, either from nature or from folly; and whoever, therefore, finds himself inclined to envy another, should remember that he knows not the real condition which he desires to obtain, but is certain that by indulging a vicious passion, he must lessen that happiness which he thinks already too sparingly bestowed.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.