I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.
O charitable philosopher, I beg you to help me. My mind is weak but my soul is strong. Kindle that soul, and the sacred fire shall never be extinguished.
It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy.
But what can a man see of a library being one day in it?
That favorite subject, Myself.
Influence must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should.
I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically.
I find I journalize too tediously. Let me try to abbreviate.
My mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian ether.
I am, I flatter myself, completely a citizen of the world. In my travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Corsica, France, I never felt myself from home.
Have a sense of piety ever on your mind, and be ever mindful that this is subject to no change, but will last you as long as life and support you in death. Elevate your soul by prayer and by contemplation without mystical enthusiasm.
My wife, who does not like journalizing, said it was leaving myself embowelled to posterity – a good strong figure. But I think itis rather leaving myself embalmed. It is certainly preserving myself.
I make it a kind of pious rule to go to every funeral to which I am invited, both as I wish to pay a proper respect to the dead, unless their characters have been bad, and as I would wish to have the funeral of my own near relations or of myself well attended.
If a man who is born to a fortune cannot make himself easier and freer than those who are not, he gains nothing.
Friendship, “the wine of life,” should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed.
But the question is, whether the animals who endure such sufferings of various kinds for the service and entertainment of man, would accept existence upon the terms on which they have it.
In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.
In every picture there should be shade as well as light.
The scent of Sloth tempts a smug man.
What a curious creature is man; with what a variety of powers and faculties is he endued; yet how easily is he disturbed and put out of order.