He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning to compose, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to improve in speed than in accuracy.

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.

A transition from an author's book to his conversation is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope.