In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue.

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

Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, and born in bed, in bed we die; the near approach a bed may show of human bliss to human woe.