I Look Upon Every Day To Be

Affectation Is To Be Always Distinguished From Hypocrisy As Being The Art Of Counterfeiting Those Qualities, Which We Might With Innocence And Safety, Be Known To Want. Hypocrisy Is The Necessary Burden Of Villainy; Affectation Part Of The Chosen Trappings Of Folly.

There Prevails Among Men Of Letters, An Opinion, That All Appearance Of Science Is Particularly Hateful To Women; And That Therefore Whoever Desires To Be Well Received In Female Assemblies, Must Qualify Himself By A Total Rejection Of All That Is Serious, Rational, Or Important; Must Consider Argument Or Criticism As Perpetually Interdicted; And Devote All His Attention To Trifles, And All His Eloquence To Compliment.

If Misery Be The Effect Of Virtue, It Ought To Be Reverenced; If Of Ill-fortune, To Be Pitied; And If Of Vice, Not To Be Insulted, Because It Is Perhaps Itself A Punishment Adequate To The Crime By Which It Was Produced.

In Writing, As In Life, Faults Are Endured Without Disgust When They Are Associated With Transcendent Merit, And May Be Sometimes Recommended To Weak Judgments By The Lustre Which They Obtain From Their Union With Excellence; But It Is The Business Of Those Who Presume To Superintend The Taste Or Morals Of Mankind To Separate Delusive Combinations, And Distinguish That Which May Be Praised From That Which Can Only Be Excused.

There Is Reason To Suspect, That The Distinctions Of Mankind Have More Show Than Value, When It Is Found That All Agree To Be Weary Alike Of Pleasures And Of Cares; That The Powerful And The Weak, The Celebrated And Obscure, Join In One Common Wish, And Implore From Nature's Hand The Nectar Of Oblivion.