Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning.

What is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please.

I doubt if there ever was a man who was not gratified by being told that he was liked by the women.

Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terror; in spring the heart of tranquility dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: in winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailing of hunger and the cries of the creation in distress

The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty.

An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away.

A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion; he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.