The establishment of a society for the encouragement of arts will produce great benefits before they are perverted to mischiefs.

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I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.

The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.

He would be a very absurd legislator who should pretend to set bounds to his country's welfare, lest it should perish by knowing no bounds.

I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.

It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform - They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

When a Frenchman reads of the garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he concludes it was something approaching to that of Versailles, with clipped hedges, berceaus, and trellis work.

Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie.

How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.

The world is a tragedy to those who feel but a comedy to those who think.

Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.