No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.

In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.

The public is a bad guesser.

It is an impressive truth that sometimes in the very lowest forms of duty, less than which would rank a man as a villain, there is, nevertheless the sublimest ascent of self-sacrifice. To do less would class you as an object of eternal scorn, to do so much presumes the grandeur of heroism.

The burden of the incommunicable.