"The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope."
"I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works."
"That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner."
"There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it."
"Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified."
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it."