I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.

The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty.

For who is pleased with himself.

This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords.

It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent.

To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them. All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater evil than poverty or pain.

I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.