New arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow everything from their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature or from life.

The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.

Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them; and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.

By writing, you learn to write.

Unconstraint is the grace of conversation.

Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain; and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves.

Pendantry is the unseasonable ostentation of learning. It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject or in the manner d treating it.