Learn That The Present Hour Alone Is

Knowledge Is Praised And Desired By Multitudes Whom Her Charms Could Never Rouse From The Couch Of Sloth; Whom The Faintest Invitation Of Pleasure Draws Away From Their Studies; To Whom Any Other Method Of Wearing The Day Is More Eligible Than The Use Of Books, And Who Are More Easily Engaged By Any Conversation Than Such As May Rectify Their Notions Or Enlarge Their Comprehension.

Memory Is The Primary And Fundamental Power, Without Which There Could Be No Other Intellectual Operation.

To Tell Of Disappointment And Misery, To Thicken The Darkness Of Futurity, And Perplex The Labyrinth Of Uncertainty, Has Been Always A Delicious Employment Of The Poets

And Panting Time Toil'd After Him In Vain.

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.