If you can't be content with what you have received, be thankful for what you have escaped.

These poor rich men, we anglers pity them perfectly.

Let us be thankful for health and competence, and, above all, for a quiet conscience.

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can't buy.

And this, and many other like blessings, we enjoy daily. And for most of them, because they be so common, most men forget to pay their praises: but let not us, because it is a sacrifice so pleasing to Him that made that sun and us, and still protects us, and gives us flowers, and showers, and stomachs, and meat, and content, and leisure to go a-fishing.

If all the theories were correct, there wouldn't be a fish left in all of our lakes and rivers and streams.

And though it is most certain, that two lutes being both strung and turned to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the other will warble a faint audible harmony in answer to the same tune: yet many will not believe there is any such thing as sympathy of souls, and I am well pleased that every reader do enjoy his own opinion.