Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

We cannot at once catch the applauses of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise.

No truer word, save God's, was ever spoken, Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.

Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one

The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.