To build is to be robbed.
A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.
Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.
Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.
People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.
There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness; yet this worst, this meanest fate, every one who dares to write has reason to fear.
It is surely very narrow policy that supposes money to be the chief good.
You despise a man for avarice; but you do not hate him.
Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.
Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever.
The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.
Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.
The booksellers are generous liberal-minded men.
To forget, or pretend to do so, to return a borrowed article, is the meanest sort of petty theft.
Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger.
The general remedy of those who are uneasy without knowing the cause is change of place.
Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep; but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner.
I do not envy a clergyman’s life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.
Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.