“Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.”

“Oh! think what anxious moments pass betweenThe birth of plots, and their last fatal periods.”

“Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind.”

“Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.”

“The gods in bounty work up storms about us, that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength and throw out into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life.”

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

“True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, in the enjoyment of one's self, and, in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.”