Ignorance, When It Is Voluntary, Is Criminal.

Many Causes May Vitiate A Writer's Judgement Of His Own Works. On That Which Has Cost Him Much Labour He Sets A High Value, Because He Is Unwilling To Think That He Has Been Diligent In Vain: What Has Been Produced Without Toilsome Efforts Is Considered With Delight As A Proof Of Vigorous Faculties And Fertile Invention; And The Last Work, Whatever It Be, Has Necessarily Most Of The Grace Of Novelty.

Being Married To Those Sleepy-souled Women Is Just Like Playing At Cards For Nothing: No Passion Is Excited And The Time Is Filled Up. I Do Not, However, Envy A Fellow One Of Those Honeysuckle Wives For My Part, As They Are But Creepers At Best And Commonly Destroy The Tree They So Tenderly Cling About.

But The Distant Hope Of Being One Day Useful Or Eminent Ought Not To Mislead Us Too Far From That Study Which Is Equally Requisite To The Great And Mean, To The Celebrated And Obscure; The Art Of Moderating The Desires, Of Repressing The Appetites; And Of Conciliating Or Retaining The Favour Of Mankind.

It Is Not The Desire Of New Acquisitions, But The Glory Of Conquests, That Fires The Soldier's Breast; As Indeed The Town Is Seldom Worth Much, When It Has Suffered The Devastations Of A Siege.

Men Are Most Powerfully Affected By Those Evils Which Themselves Feel, Or Which Appear Before Their Own Eyes.