Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.

Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him.

Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.

The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favour, which an artful flatterer may gradually strengthen, till wishes for a particular qualification are improved to hopes of attainment, and hopes of attainment to belief of possession.