There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

A coxcomb is ugly all over with the effectation of a fine gentleman.

Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.

I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.

Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.

I do not wonder that, where the monastick life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves.