What Is Said Upon A Subject Is

Life Must Be Filled Up, And The Man Who Is Not Capable Of Intellectual Pleasures Must Content Himself With Such As His Senses Can Afford.

He Who Expects Much Will Be Often Disappointed; Yet Disappointment Seldom Cures Us Of Expectation, Or Has Any Other Effect Than That Of Producing A Moral Sentence Or Peevish Exclamation.

Whatever Withdraws Us From The Power Of Our Senses; Whatever Makes The Past, The Distant, Or The Future Predominate Over The Present, Advances Us In The Dignity Of Thinking Beings.

I Know Not Anything More Pleasant, Or More Instructive, Than To Compare Experience With Expectation, Or To Register From Time To Time The Difference Between Idea And Reality. It Is By This Kind Of Observation That We Grow Daily Less Liable To Be Disappointed.

Yet Reason Frowns In War's Unequal Game, Where Wasted Nations Raise A Single Name; And Mortgag'd States Their Grandsire's Wreaths Regret, From Age To Age In Everlasting Debt; Wreaths Which At Last The Dear-bought Right Convey To Rust On Medals, Or On Stones Decay.