The saints are the sinners who keep on trying.

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honorable defeat to be a form of victory.

Am I no a bonny fighter?

And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought.

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age.

Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.