Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.

It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers; nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation.

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

When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.

When a poet mentions the spring, we know that the zephyrs are about to whisper, that the groves are to recover their verdure, the linnets to warble forth their notes of love, and the flocks and herds to frisk over vales painted with flowers: yet, who is there so insensible of the beauties of nature, so little delighted with the renovation of the world, as not to feel his heart bound at the mention of the spring?

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.