So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

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

Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day.

Poetry cannot be translation

Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.