To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.

Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which, we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect, the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.

Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.

The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

Zeal will do more than knowledge.