As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself.

Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.

I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.

There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.