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

One must be strict even in little things.

[A]s a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal.

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.

We often observe in lawyers, who as Quicquid agunt homines is the matter of law suits, are sometimes obliged to pick up a temporary knowledge of an art or science, of which they understood nothing till their brief was delivered, and appear to be much masters of it.

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

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically.