The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.

Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot obstruct.

No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied.

That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both.

I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honorable to save a citizen than to kill an enemy.

Celestial wisdom calms the mind.