The blackest ink of fate are sure my lot, And when fate writ my name it made a blot.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

The world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

For I hope my Friends will pardon me, when I declare, I know none of them without a Fault; and I should be sorry if I could imagine, I had any Friend who could not see mine. Forgiveness, of this Kind, we give and demand in Turn.

Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?