Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.

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 is not only dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others.

To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and expressions present themselves at the first summons; but such happiness, the greatest genius does not always obtain; and common writers know it only to such a degree, as to credit its possibility. Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar

It is incident to physicians, I am afraid, beyond all other men, to mistake subsequence for consequence.

An exotic and irrational entertainment.