my father discouraged me by ridiculing my performances and telling me verse makers were generally beggars. (Location 287)
prose writing has been of great use to me in the course of my life, and was a principal means of my advancement, (Location 288)
made the greater progress from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking. (Location 329)
a man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear of being thought to have but (Location 521)
There was great difference in persons, and discretion did not always accompany years, nor was youth always without (Location 669)
So convenient a thing it is to be a “reasonable” creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do. (Location 689)
I grew convinced that truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life; (Location 1093)
rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of morals, politics, or natural philosophy, to be discussed by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. (Location 1120)
the impropriety of presenting one’s self as the proposer of any useful project that might be supposed to raise one’s reputation in the smallest degree above that of one’s neighbors, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project. (Location 1317)
Keeping holy the Sabbath day. 2. Being diligent in reading the holy Scriptures. 3. Attending duly the public worship. 4. Partaking of the sacrament. 5. Paying a due respect to God’s ministers. (Location 1360)
These names of virtues, with their precepts, were: (Location 1434)
“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.” (Location 1820)
