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• "Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.
  • Ancient and Modern Learning

• When all is done, human life is, at the greatest, and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.
  • Miscellanea, Part II, "Of Poetry".

• No clap of thunder in a fair frosty day could astonish the world more than [England's] declaration of war against Holland in 1672.
  • Memoirs, Volume II, p. 255.