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

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.

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

Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and far from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Ionia.

A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.