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.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.

There may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in publick than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say.