Allegories drawn to great length will always break.

In discussing these exceptions from the course of nature, the first question is, whether the fact be justly stated. That which is strange is delightful, and a pleasing error is not willingly detected.

Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the collective labour of a thousand intellects.

Unless a woman has an amorous heart, she is a dull companion.

No man hates him at whom he can laugh.

Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained

He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great object of remark is human life. Every Nation has something peculiar in its Manufactures, its Works of Genius, its Medicines, its Agriculture, its Customs, and its Policy. He only is a useful Traveller, who brings home something by which his country may be benefited; who procures some supply of Want, or some mitigation of Evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it.