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.

I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

The specualtist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity; and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less.

It is, however, not necessary, that a man should forbear to write, till he has discovered some truth unknown before; he may be sufficiently useful, by only diversifying the surface of knowledge, and luring the mind by a new appearance to a second view of those beauties which it had passed over inattentively before.

[W]ith an unquiet mind, neither exercise, nor diet, nor physick can be of much use.

Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.