Who, with tame cowardice familiar grown, would hear my thoughts, but fear to speak their own.
Quick-circulating slanders mirth afford; and reputation bleeds in every word.
The laws I love; the lawyers I suspect.
Though folly, robed in purple, shines, Though vice exhausts Peruvian mines, Yet shall they tremble and turn pale When satire wields her mighty flail.
To copy faults is want of sense.
To copy beauty forfeits all pretense to fame; to copy faults is want of sense.
Genius is of no country; her pure ray Spreads all abroad, as general as the day.
Genius is nothing more than inflamed enthusiasm.
Little do such men know the toil, the pains, the daily, nightly racking of the brains, to range the thoughts, the matter to digest, to cull fit phrases, and reject the rest.
Be England what she will, With all her faults she is my country still.
England a fortune-telling host, As num’rous as the stars, could boast; Matrons, who toss the cup, and see The grounds of Fate in grounds of tea...
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought, Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.
Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.
Patience is sorrow’s salve.
With various readings stored his empty skull, Learn’d without sense, and venerably dull.
Those who would make us feel must feel themselves.
Genius is independent of situation.
No tribute is laid on castles in the air.
Man and wife, Coupled together for the sake of strife.
When fiction rises pleasing to the eye, men will believe, because they love the lie; but truth herself, if clouded with a frown, must have some solemn proof to pass her down.