Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.

Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.

No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what the society holds to be true.

Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books.