I am sensible that my keenness of temper, and a vanity to be distinguished for the day, make me too often splash in life.... I amresolved to restrain myself and attend more to decorum.

I am now to offer some thoughts upon that sameness or familiarity which we frequently find between passages in different authors without quotation. This may be one of three things either what is called Plagiarism, or Imitation, or Coincidence.

There is indeed a strange prejudice against Quotation.

All censure of a man's self is oblique praise.

He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them.

A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion.

I find I journalize too tediously. Let me try to abbreviate.