Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame - to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell.

Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.

Westward, beyond the still pleasant, but, even then, no longer solitary, hamlet of Charing, a broad space, broken here and there by scattered houses and venerable pollards, in the early spring of 1467, presented the rural scene for the sports and pastimes of the inhabitants of Westminister and London.

Youth is in danger until it learns to look upon debts as furies.

Of all the weaknesses little men rail against, there is none that they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of incredulity is the surest. Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.

Vanity calculates but poorly on the vanity of others; what a virtue we should distil from frailty, what a world of pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs.

He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.