No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

In sovereignty there are no gradations.

Probably no one will ever know whether it is better to wear a nightcap or not.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.

There are in every age new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.