Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.

Such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that security and despair are equal follies; and as it is presumption and arrogance to anticipate triumphs, it is weakness and cowardice to prog-nosticate miscarriages.

Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it.

Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.