We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.

It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.

Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images; and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things.

A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.