What An Insignificant Life Is This Which

He Had No Settled Plan Of Life, Nor Looked Forward At All, But Merely Lived From Day To Day. Yet He Read A Great Deal In A Desultory Manner, Without Any Scheme Of Study, As Chance Threw Books In His Way, And Inclination Directed Him Through Them.

My Readers, Who May At First Be Apt To Consider Quotation As Downright Pedantry, Will Be Surprised When I Assure Them, That Next To The Simple Imitation Of Sounds And Gestures, Quotation Is The Most Natural And Most Frequent Habitude Of Human Nature. For, Quotation Must Not Be Confined To Passages Adduced Out Of Authors. He Who Cites The Opinion, Or Remark, Or Saying Of Another, Whether It Has Been Written Or Spoken, Is Certainly One Who Quotes; And This We Shall Find To Be Universally Practiced.

Why Should Not The Knowledge, The Skill, The Expertness, The Assiduity, And The Spirited Hazards Of Trade And Commerce, When Crowned With Success, Be Entitled To Give Those Flattering Distinctions By Which Mankind Are So Universally Captivated? Such Are The Specious, But False Arguments For A Proposition Which Always Will Find Numerous Advocates, In A Nation Where Men Are Every Day Starting Up From Obscurity To Wealth. To Refute Them Is Needless. The General Sense Of Mankind Cries Out, With Irresistible Force, "un Gentilhomme Est Toujours Gentilhomme.

Drinking Is In Reality An Occupation Which Employs A Considerable Portion Of The Time Of Many People; And To Conduct It In The Most Rational And Agreeable Manner Is One Of The Great Arts Of Living.

All Censure Of A Man's Self Is Oblique Praise.