What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.

Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other; such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else and begin a new pursuit.

I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

He that has too much to do will do something wrong.

None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame.