...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

No cause more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion of our own importance. He that imagines an assembly filled with his merit, panting with expectation, and hushed with attention, easily terrifies himself with the dread of disappointing them, and strains his imagination in pursuit of something that may vindicate the veracity of fame, and show that his reputation was not gained by chance.

Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

I doubt if there ever was a man who was not gratified by being told that he was liked by the women.

Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.