Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.

A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century

To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.

"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."

Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable.

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.