“In a man’s letters his soul lies naked.”

“All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.”

“The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.”

“Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.”

“A man must assume the moral burden of his own boredom.”

“He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own dispositions will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove”

“Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked his reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own great merit with steady consciousness, and waiting, without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation.”