No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library; for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditations and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue.

Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious; but, for the same reason, every one is eager to instruct his neighbors.

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, - attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron.

The love of fame is a passion natural and universal, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise.

Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.