I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it - between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power.

Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility

Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.

Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.

The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste.

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.