The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom. The pride of wit has kept ages busy in the discussion of useless questions, and the pride of power has destroyed armies, to gain or to keep unprofitable possessions.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife; every human being in such places is a spy.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.