Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.

I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.

Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.

Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.

My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

We may daily discover crowds acquire sufficient wealth to buy gentility, but very few that possess the virtues which ennoble human nature, and (in the best sense of the word) constitute a gentleman.