Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.

Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance

Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

It is very common for us to desire most what we are least qualified to obtain.

Now ... that you are going to marry, do not expect more from life, than life will afford.

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

Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.