Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness; yet this worst, this meanest fate, every one who dares to write has reason to fear.

Language is the dress of thought.

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

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.

In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.

Resentment gratifies him who intended an injury, and pains him unjustly who did not intend it.