Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian.

Curiosity is the thirst of the soul.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature which are most proper for imitation: greater care is still required in representing life, which is so often discoloured by passion or deformed by wickedness. If the world be promiscuously described, I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account; or why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately upon mankind, as upon a mirror which shows all that presents itself without discrimination.