The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.

Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.

A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame.

To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets

Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.

Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the collective labour of a thousand intellects.