The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly; the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.

To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.

To buried merit rise the tardy bust.

The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.

Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre