Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain.

Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.

Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.

No one ever became great by imitation.