It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present.

The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it.

..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it.

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.

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.

The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.

A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.