I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.

The soul and body are joint-sharers in every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time; andif he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.

The way to fame, is like the way to heaven,--through much tribulation.

How many thousands of [lives] are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)--and consider'd asnothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis.

If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of health, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow; take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.