Nothing Is Difficult, When Gain And Honour

The Present Time Is Seldom Able To Fill Desire Or Imagination With Immediate Enjoyment, And We Are Forced To Supply Its Deficiencies By Recollection Or Anticipation.

So Scanty Is Our Present Allowance Of Happiness That In Many Situations Life Could Scarcely Be Supported If Hope Were Not Allowed To Relieve The Present Hour By Pleasures Borrowed From The Future.

Even Those To Whom Providence Has Allotted Greater Strength Of Understanding, Can Expect Only To Improve A Single Science. In Every Other Part Of Learning, They Must Be Content To Follow Opinions, Which They Are Not Able To Examine; And, Even In That Which They Claim As Peculiarly Their Own, Can Seldom Add More Than Some Small Particle Of Knowledge, To The Hereditary Stock Devolved To Them From Ancient Times, The Collective Labour Of A Thousand Intellects.

It Is No Matter What You Teach Them First, Any More Than What Leg You Shall Put Into Your Breeches First. You May Stand Disputing Which Is Best To Put In First, But In The Mean Time Your Breech Is Bare. Sir, While You Are Considering Which Of Two Things You Should Teach Your Child First, Another Boy Has Learned Them Both.

Nothing Has So Exposed Men Of Learning To Contempt And Ridicule As Their Ignorance Of Things Which Are Known To All But Themselves. Those Who Have Been Taught To Consider The Institutions Of The Schools As Giving The Last Perfection To Human Abilities Are Surprised To See Men Wrinkled With Study, Yet Wanting To Be Instructed In The Minute Circumstances Of Propriety, Or The Necessary Form Of Daily Transaction; And Quickly Shake Off Their Reverence For Modes Of Education Which They Find To Produce No Ability Above The Rest Of Mankind.