It Is A Rare Life That Remains

In The Examples That I Here Bring In Of What I Have [read], Heard, Done Or Said, I Have Refrained From Daring To Alter Even The Smallest And Most Indifferent Circumstances. My Conscience Falsifies Not An Iota; For My Knowledge I Cannot Answer.

There Is Nothing So Noble And So Right As To Play Our Human Life Well And Fitly, Nor Anything So Difficult To Learn As How To Livethis Life Well And According To Nature.

We Are Neither Obstinately Nor Wilfully To Oppose Evils, Nor Truckle Under Them For Want Of Courage, But That We Are Naturally To Give Way To Them, According To Their Condition And Our Own, We Ought To Grant Free Passage To Diseases; And I Find They Stay Less With Me Who Let Them Alone. And I Have Lost Those Which Are Reputed The Most Tenacious And Obstinate Of Their Own Defervescence, Without Any Help Or Art, And Contrary To Their Rules. Let Us A Little Permit Nature To Take Her Own Way; She Better Understands Her Own Affairs Than We.

To Compose Our Character Is Our Duty, Not To Compose Books, And To Win, Not Battles And Provinces, But Order And Tranquillity In Our Conduct.

To Make Judgements About Great And Lofty Things, A Soul Of The Same Stature Is Needed; Otherwise We Ascribe To Them That Vice Which Is Our Own.