The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.

Difference of thoughts will produce difference of language. He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of a larger meaning; he that thinks with more subtilty will seek for terms of more nice discrimination; and where is the wonder, since words are but the images of things, that he who never knew the original should not know the copies?

Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

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

Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.