Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.

Necessity is a violent school-mistress.

Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something; my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.

Persons of mean understandings, not so inquisitive, nor so well instructed, are made good Christians, and by reverence and obedience, implicity believe, and abide by their belief.

I love a gay and sociable wisdom, and shun harshness and austerity in behaviour, holding every surly countenance suspect.

I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.

Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.