All discourse of which others cannot partake is not only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleasure and entertainment, but, what never fails to excite resentment, an insolent assertion of superiority, and a triumph over less enlightened understandings. The pedant is, therefore, not only heard with weariness but malignity; and those who conceive themselves insulted by his knowledge never fail to tell with acrimony how injudiciously it was exerted.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.

If, sir, men were all virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither wall, nor mountains, nor seas could afford any security.

...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.