The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless.

It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world.

Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.

Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot obstruct.

Hope is itself a species of happiness.

Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb always a coxcomb.