No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.

About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.

Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them; and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.

When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon another.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.