Allegories drawn to great length will always break.

Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; - from fear of its being abused.

Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

Surely, it is much easier to respect a man who has always had respect, than to respect a man who we know was last year no better than ourselves, and will be no better next year.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.