So we must work at our profession and not make anybody else's idleness an excuse for our own. There is no lack of readers and listeners; it is for us to produce something worth being written and heard.

The living voice is that which sways the soul.

Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and by sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye.

He [Pliny the Elder] used to say that 'no book [etc] was so bad but some good might be got out of it'.

It is better to excel in any single art than to arrive only at mediocrity in several, so moderate skill in several is to be preferred where one cannot attain to perfection in any.

So we must work at our profession and not make anybody else's idleness an excuse for our own. There is no lack of readers and listeners; it is for us to produce something worth being written and heard.

Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions.