“Nothing [...] will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.”

“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.”

“While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.”

“And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and Passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in strength and innovation, and the latter in elegance and refinement.”

“Sir, there is nothing too little for so little creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.”

“I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.”

“In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness."(On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers)”