We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of acts of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.
I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of social joy.
I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything...
We had some port, and drank damnation to the play and eternal remorse to the author.
I have seen many a bear led by a man: but I never before saw a man led by a bear.
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.