The happiness of building lasted but a little while, for though I love to spend, I hate to be cheated; and I soon found, that to build is to be robbed.

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.

Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly-but then less is learned there; so what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.

A family ... is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.

Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.