Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

He that is warm for truth, and fearless in its defense, performs one of the duties of a good man; he strenghtens his own conviction, and guards others from delusion; but steadiness of belief, and boldness of profession, are yet only part of the form of godliness.

Read over your compositions and whenever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.

A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century

I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.

No man was ever great by imitation.