To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning; but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio; and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.

To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.

There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.

All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.

Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.