Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.

No good writer was ever long neglected; no great man overlooked by men equally great. Impatience is a proof of inferior strength, and a destroyer of what little there may be.

O what a thing is age! Death without death's quiet.

Such is our impatience, such our hatred of procrastination, to everything but the amendment of our practices and the adornment of our nature, one would imagine we were dragging Time along by force, and not he us.

It appears to be among the laws of nature, that the mighty of intellect should be pursued and carped by the little, as the solitary flight of one great bird is followed by the twittering petulance of many smaller.

Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.

As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.