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

Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony

The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind.

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

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.