"Dr Blair . . . asked . . . whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems [Ossian] . . . `Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children.'"

"From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life."

"Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be."

"Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us"

"The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions."

"Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic"

"The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence"

"Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions"

"Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement."

"My dear friend, clear your mind of can't."

"I am willing to love all mankind, except an American."

"Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging."

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

"Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize"

"What we ever hope to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence."

"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."

"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence."

"Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements."

"Smoking. . . is a shocking thing, blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes and noses, and having the same thing done to us."

"I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed."

"The triumph of hope over experience"

"The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear"

"Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect."

"Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last"

"Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing."

"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice."

"He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions."

"I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark."

"I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse."

"Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic."

"Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well."

"There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?"

"No two men can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other."

"There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate evils are"

"A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice."

"The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking."

"His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises."

"It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality."

"It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other."

"Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure."

"No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring."

"No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. A man in a jail has more room, better food and commonly better company."

"Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea."

"He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty"

"He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel."

"To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed."

"There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence"

"The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion."

"Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy."

"The insolence of wealth will creep out"