In a mist the heights can for the most part see each other; but the valleys cannot.

I was surprised just now at seeing a cobweb around a knocker; for it was not on the door of heaven.

Curiosity is little more than another name for Hope.

Few take advice, or physic, without wry faces at it.

Histories used often to be stories: the fashion now is to leave out the story. Our histories are stall-fed: the facts are absorbed by the reflexions, as the meat is sometimes by the fat.

The thoughtful excitement of lonely rambles, of gardening, and of other like occupations, where the mind has leisure to must during the healthful activity of the body, with the fresh and wakeful breezes blowing round it.

Some men so dislike the dust kicked up by the generation they belong to, that, being unable to pass, they lag behind it.