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

There may be community of material possessions, but there can never be community of love or esteem.

It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.

Ignorance is mere privation by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction: and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget.

I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.

That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Such is the constitution of man that labour may be styled its own reward; nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.