Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate.

The authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble out of the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same orders.

We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.

Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.

In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.