The business of life is to go forward.

Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances.

There is something in obstinacy which differs from every other passion. Whenever it fails, it never recovers, but either breaks like iron, or crumbles sulkily away, like a fractured arch. Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest, their sufferings and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.