We fancy that our afflictions are sent us directly from above; sometimes we think it in piety and contrition, but oftener in moroseness and discontent.

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked. God sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.

Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world.

Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.

That which moveth the heart most is the best poetry; it comes nearest unto God, the source of all power.

Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, to everything but the amendment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us.

An ingenious mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof.