Ease, a neutral state between pain and pleasure ... if it is not rising into pleasure will be falling towards pain.

I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.

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

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

Where no man thinks himself under any obligation to submit to another, and, instead of co-operating in one great scheme, every one hastens through by-paths to private profit, no great change can suddenly be made; nor is superior knowledge of much effect, where every man resolves to use his own eyes and his own judgment, and every one applauds his own dexterity and diligence, in proportion as he becomes rich sooner than his neighbour.

The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances.

It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.