When a Man is tried of London, he is tired of life.

Now ... that you are going to marry, do not expect more from life, than life will afford.

It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.

A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope.

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his service unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.

A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.