Our Grub-street biographers watch for the death of a great man like so many undertakers on purpose to make a penny of him.
There is no passion that is not finely expressed in those parts of the inspired writings which are proper for divine songs and anthems.
Nothing, says Longinus, can be great, the contempt of which is great.
A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.
Fables take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it.
Men naturally warm and heady are transported with the greatest flush of good-nature.
In rising sighs and falling tears.
The ungrown glories of his beamy hair.
Plutarch says very finely that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies.
The head has the most beautiful appearance, as well as the highest station, in a human figure.
It must be a prospect pleasing to God Himself to see His creation forever beautifying in His eyes, and drawing nearer Him by greater degrees of resemblance.
A religious hope does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings but makes her rejoice in them.
The world is so full of ill-nature that I have lampoons sent me by people who cannot spell, and satires composed by those who scarce know how to write.
How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?
The schoolboy counts the time till the return of the holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he is married.
An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.
Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.
Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance.
There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.
One would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started into discourse; but, instead of this we find that conversation is never so much straightened and confined, as in numerous assemblies.