Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.

Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.

Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied.

It very seldom happens to a man that his business is his pleasure.