Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Reason and truth will prevail at last

Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.

I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning to compose, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to improve in speed than in accuracy.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.