It is a difficult task to talk to the purpose, and to put life and perspicuity into our discourse.

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age.

By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with the ages past; and this way of running up beyond one's nativity is better than Plato's pre-existence.

Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.

A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading.

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride or design in their conversation.

Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind, that enables us to do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.