When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Admiration must be continued by that novelty which first produces it; and how much soever is given, there must always be reason to imagine that more remains.

It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no matter for narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs shuld not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.

He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it.

We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.