Books without the knowledge of life are useless.

Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.

Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.

There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes without determination.

Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.

He that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the public judgement. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.