As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

It may be no less dangerous to claim, on certain occasions, too little than too much. There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.

That we must all die, we always knew, I wish I had sooner remembred it.

Whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.

I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful; for not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use; but there is such a uniformity in the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any possibility of good or ill but is common to human kind.