The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms.
Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects, – frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that, whoever values this gift in himself, has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.
The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion.
Whence proceeds this weight we lay On what detracting people say? Their utmost malice cannot make Your head, or tooth, or finger ache; Nor spoil your shapes, distort your face, Or put one feature out of place.
I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.
I’ll give you leave to call me anything, if you don’t call me spade.
Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Tell truth, and shame the devil.
The more careless, the more modish.
Surely mortal man is a broomstick!
You must take the will for the deed.
Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature.
Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.
Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe, how much it altered her person for the worse.
It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
I’m up and down and round about, Yet all the world can’t find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.
Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.