If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

There is such a difference between the pursuits of men in great cities that one part of the inhabitants lives to little other purpose than to wonder at the rest. Some have hopes and fears, wishes and aversions, which never enter into the thoughts of others, and inquiry is laboriously exerted to gain that which those who possess it are ready to throw away.

No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.

We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

None are happy but by anticipation of change.

When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.