Can sensual pleasure be the great end of an immortal spirit in this life? That pleasure cannot be lasting, and it must be followed by remorse, which … - Samuel Richardson

I readily own, that my lights are borrowed, replied I. I owe the observation to my godfather Mr. Deane. He is a scholar; but a greater admirer of Milton than of any of the antients. A gentleman, his particular friend, who was as great an admirer of Homer, undertook from Mr. Pope’s translation of the Iliad, to produce passages that in sublimity exceeded any in the Paradise Lost. The gentlemen met at Mr. Deane’s house, where I then was. They allowed me to be present; and this was the issue: The gentleman went away convinced, that the English poet as much excelled the Grecian in the grandeur of his sentiments, as his subject, founded on the Christian system, surpasses the pagan.

The woman who chooses a Rake, said he, does not consider, that all the sprightly airs for which she preferred him to a better man, either vanish in matrimony, or are shewn to others, to her mortal disquiet. The agreeable will be carried abroad: The disagreeable will be brought home. If he reform (and yet bad habits are very difficult to shake off) he will probably, from the reflexions on his past guilty life, be an unsociable companion, should deep and true contrition have laid hold on him: If not, what has she chosen?

The pen is almost as pretty an implement in a woman's fingers, as a needle.