The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.

If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures

Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.

The art of the writer, like that of the player, is attained by slow degrees. The power of distinguishing and discriminating comick characters, or of filling tragedy with poetical images, must be the gift of nature, which no instruction nor labour can supply; but the art of dramatick disposition, the contexture of the scenes, the involution of the plot, the expedients of suspension, and the strategems of surprise, are to be learned by practice.

Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.