"Nothing at all will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

"Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt."

"A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time but they will be remembered and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion."

"It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity."

"Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken, themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull."

"Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable."

"I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."

"A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it."

"When two Englishmen meet their first talk is of the weather."

"Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable."

"To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution."

"He left the name at which the world grew pale To point a moral or adorn a tale."

"Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author."

"Words are but the signs of ideas."

"Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned."

"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it."

"It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality."

"I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world."

"A man will turn over half a library to make one book."

"There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good."

"Alas! another instance of the triumph of hope over experience."

"Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess."

"He that has much to do will do something wrong."

"It is unjust to claim the privileges of age and retain the playthings of childhood."

"From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life."

"If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?"

"What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted."

"I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance."

"Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales."

"At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest."

"A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself."

"Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content."

"It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability."

"It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time."

"The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected."

"You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company."

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

"Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent."

"The joy of life is variety the tenderest love requires to be renewed by intervals of absence."

"A fly Sir may sting a stately horse and make him wince but one is but an insect and the other a horse still."

"Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last."

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

"Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see."

"Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?"

"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."

"Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use."

"The true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction."

"So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something."

"Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little."

"As the Spanish proverb says 'He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' So it is with traveling. A man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge."