Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.
Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.
Network. Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.
The business of the poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individual, but the species.
Example is always more efficacious than precept.
It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.
It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.
Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.
As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments...
Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world.
Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.
Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation...
Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.
All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.
Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society.
Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported.
Though I love to spend, I hate be cheated, and I found that to build is to be robbed.