Success never needs an excuse.

We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments.

Toil to some is happiness, and rest to others. This man can only breathe in crowds, and that man only in solitudes.

When the soul communes with itself the lip is silent.

The faults of a brilliant writer are never dangerous on the long run; a thousand people read his work who would read no other; inquiry is directed to each of his doctrines; it is soon discovered what is sound and what is false; the sound become maxims, and the false beacons.

We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing.

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.