To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.

No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.

Sir, sorrow is inherent in humanity. As you cannot judge two and two to be either five, or three, but certainly four, so, when comparing a worse present state with a better which is past, you cannot but feel sorrow. It is not cured by reason, but by the incursion of present objects, which bear out the past.

All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.