Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.

The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty.

I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits

Virtue is too often merely local.

Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.

It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to distinguish nature from custom; or that which is established because it is right, from that which is right only because it is established; that he may neither violate essential principles by a desire of novelty, nor debar himself from the attainment of beauties within his view, by a needless fear of breaking rules which no literary dictator had authority to enact.

Guilt once harbored in the conscious breast, intimidates the brave, degrades the great.