Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

The imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens... The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform.

All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.

Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.

In his comic scenes, Shakespeare seems to produce, without labor, what no labor can improve.

There are two types of knowledge. One is knowing a thing. The other is knowing where to find it.

Difference of thoughts will produce difference of language. He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of a larger meaning; he that thinks with more subtilty will seek for terms of more nice discrimination; and where is the wonder, since words are but the images of things, that he who never knew the original should not know the copies?