Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

He that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the public judgement. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.

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.

[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the distinctions which set one man so much above another are very little perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of mortal beings finds nothing left him but the consciousness of innocence.