Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

The young mind is pliable and imitates, but in more advanced states grows rigid and must be warmed and softened before it will receive a deep impression.

Every art, like our own, has in its composition fluctuating as well as fixed principles. It is an attentive inquiry into their difference that will enable us to determine how far we are influenced by custom and habit, and what is fixed in the nature of things.