The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth.

All violation of established practice implies in its own nature a rejection of the common opinion, a defiance of common censure, and an appeal from general laws to private judgment: he, therefore, who differs form others without apparent advantage, ought not to be angry if his arrogance is punished with ridicule; if those whose example he superciliously overlooks, point him out to derision, and hoot him back again into the common road.

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron.

You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.

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

Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning!

Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.